Amid Greece’s femicide epidemic, with 85 cases recorded between 2020 and 2024, public debate has largely focused on legal and policy responses, often neglecting the cultural and media-related dimensions of gender-based violence.

This panel will critically examine how femicides are represented in Greek mainstream and social media, exploring the communication strategies and dominant narratives that shape societal attitudes towards gender, race, and class in Greece. Bringing together journalists, academics, and policymakers, the panel aims to reflect on how the Greek media contribute to the legitimation, or contestation, of hierarchical valuations of women’s lives and to foster a vital conversation on gendered representations, on accountability, and systemic change. The event is linked to the research project Femicides in the Greek Media led by Prof Chouliaraki at the LSE Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus (Hellenic Observatory).

Meet our speakers and chair:

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor in Media and Communications at LSE and Coordinator of the Society, Identity & Rights Research Cluster at the Hellenic Observatory Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus. Her research focuses on the mediation of human vulnerability, the ethics of witnessing and the cultural politics of victimhood. She has explored those in four key domains of communication: disaster news, humanitarian and human rights communication, migration and war. She is the author of, among others, The Spectatorship of Suffering (2006), The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (2013) and The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power (with Myria Georgiou, 2022). Her most recent book, Wronged. The Weaponization of Victimhood (Columbia University Press 2024), is on the strategic uses of the victim in the communication of far-right actors in western public spheres.

Rachel Condry is Professor of Criminology in the Centre for Criminology and Fellow of St Hilda's College. She has previously been a lecturer and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and a lecturer in criminology at the University of Surrey. Her work focuses broadly on the intersections between crime and the family, which has included research projects on the families of serious offenders, prisoners’ families, parenting in youth justice, and filial violence. Rachel currently directs the Filial Violence Project and the Global Prisoners Families Group. Rachel edits the book series Routledge Studies in Crime, Justice and the Family. She is an editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and editorial board member of the Journal of Criminology.

Afroditi Koulaxi is an LSE100 Fellow at LSE, where she teaches courses on Artificial Intelligence from a social science perspective and Fairness in contemporary societies and a Research Affiliate at the Hellenic Observatory. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE). She earned her fully-funded ESRC PhD from the LSE Department of Media and Communications. Her research explores identity and migration at the intersection of sociology, urban studies, media, and communications. Currently, Dr. Koulaxi’s work investigates climate-driven displacement, with a particular emphasis on the immediate aftermath of Storm Daniel in Greece’s Thessaly region and its significant impact on citizenship, the digital divide, and resilience. Additionally, her recent research delves into digital culture and gender, examining how femicide is communicated on social media through political formal addresses, grassroots denunciations, and celebrity advocacy in Greece. Her forthcoming monograph, “Citizenship in Crisis in Athens: Migration, Media and Identity”, will be published next year by Routledge.

Maria Liapi is a sociologist-researcher, member of the Steering Committee and safeguarding representative of Diotima - Centre for Gender Rights and Equality.

Irini Moustaki is a Professor of Social Statistics at LSE and a Research Affiliate (Society, Identity & Rights cluster) at the Hellenic Observatory Centre. She received her bachelor’s degree in Statistics and Computer Science from the Athens University of Economics and Business and her MSc and PhD in Statistics from the LSE. Her research interests are in latent variable models and structural equation models. Her methodological work includes treating missing data, longitudinal data, detection of outliers, goodness-of-fit tests, and advanced estimation methods. Furthermore, she has made methodological and applied contributions to comparative cross-national studies and epidemiological studies on rare diseases.

More about this event

The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as one of the premier research centres on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. It engages in a range of activities, including developing and supporting academic and policy-related research; organisation of conferences, seminars and workshops; academic exchange through visiting fellowships and internships; as well as teaching at the graduate level through LSE's European Institute.

The twitter Hashtag for this event is: #LSEGreece