Alexis Papahelas, executive editor of Greece's paper of record, joins Vassilis Monastiriotis at the LSE Hellenic Observatory to read Greece's position in a fragmenting world.
The Hellenic Observatory sits inside the LSE’s European Institute and is the internationally recognised research centre on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. In 2024 it was reconstituted as the Hellenic Observatory Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus, on a strategy of widening that research base beyond the School itself. Its public events are where the academic work meets the people making the decisions it studies.
Greece spent a decade climbing out of a deep economic crisis and arrived at recovery and renewed stability. The question this evening puts is what comes after that, at a moment when geopolitical tension is rising and the global economy is fragmenting around a country that has only just finished stabilising. It is a harder question than the crisis was, because there is no obvious emergency to organise around.
Alexis Papahelas is the executive editor of Greece’s paper of record and its most widely heard broadcast commentator, which makes him as close as Athens comes to a single authoritative reading of its own politics. He is in conversation with Professor Vassilis Monastiriotis, who holds the Eleftherios Venizelos Chair of Contemporary Greek Studies and directs the Observatory. It runs on Monday 19 October 2026, in person and online, with the Houghton Street room named to ticketholders rather than published. Running it online as well is how the Observatory reaches Athens on the same evening.