Dr Petros Karatsareas

I am actively engaged in initiatives that promote the value of multilingualism for multilingual individuals, diasporic communities, and society at large.

In 2024, Rexhina Ndoci and I collaborated with the Hellenic Centre to host “Albanians in Greece: Migration, Memory and Art”, a multimodal event that provided a platform for Albanian voices to reflect on their lived experiences, share personal narratives, and challenge prevailing stereotypes. The event combined artistic expression with academic insights, fostering a deeper understanding of the Albanian migrant experience in Greece and highlighting the role of cultural memory in shaping identities.

In 2023, in collaboration with Rexhina Ndoci, I hosted Speak Alb! as part of the University of Westminster’s Difference Festival. This panel brought together Albanian voices to dismantle xenophobic narratives that demonise, homogenise, and dehumanise Albanian-speaking migrants in the UK. These narratives, often perpetuated by the media and even government sources, were challenged through research findings, evidence-based arguments, civil society engagement, cultural contributions, and personal accounts from migrants themselves.

Also in 2023, together with the project team of the “Migrant food, languages, and identities in the dawn of the post-Brexit and COVID-19 era” project, I co-organised the interactive event Greek and Italian Migrant Foodways in London: A Sensory Experience as part of the Labour Migration Research Group showcase at Regent Cinema. We transformed the cinema bar into a Greek taverna and an Italian trattoria, offering attendees a sensory dining experience. Guests sampled both traditional and innovative Greek and Italian dishes, while team members led discussions on authenticity and food entrepreneurship in the context of migrant communities.

In 2019, Dr Anna Charalambidou (Middlesex University) and I launched the Grenglish Project, a public engagement initiative that brought together members of the UK’s Greek Cypriot diaspora in a crowdsourcing effort to collect linguistic material that reflects the community’s linguistic history. 

In 2018, I was awarded a small grant with Athena Mandis (QMUL) to organise a tour of Greek Cypriot London as part of the AHRC/British Academy-funded Being Human festival. The tour traced the contribution of the Greek Cypriot diaspora to London’s multiculturalism following the route of the 29 bus, a path that is emblematic of the diaspora’s historic northward expansion.