There is nothing more difficult than trying to select the best stories for 2022 – all our work is good. There are so many good stories, but we had to make a choice. The stories we selected say something about our community, our politics, our culture, and it’s relation to global and local issues.
These are true stories which provide a genuine and nuanced interpretation of our tagline The Hellenic Perspective.
We also add some work from our features and opinion writer contributors, and even there we come up short, as there has been so much good work published.
Fotis Kapetopoulos
Fotis Kapetopoulos’ interview with Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, where he likens him to Julius Caesar in decision making is a telling one, he shows a portrait of a premier determined and confident. His interview with Greece’s minister of culture Lina Mendoni reveals a modern Greece looking to engage with the world in a more meaningful way though culture. In Greece Fotis talked to Filo, an African Greek, and reflected on Athens’ new diversity. He talked to author Christos Tsiolkas and provided an insight not often seen in mainstream publication.
Dan Andrews always crosses the Rubicon
Lina Mendoni – Greece’s keeper of culture
Christos Tsiolkas seeks beauty in the new world of puritans
Nelly Skoufatoglou
A Neos Kosmos stalwart, Nelly Skoufatoglou worked hard to deliver interesting interviews and features. She wrote on one of the more important exhibitions to be presented in Australia at the Victorian Museum, the Open Horizons: Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections from the National Archaeological Museum of Greece. She talked to author Gail Jones about her anti-war novel set in Greece in World War I which begins with a Sydney woman called Olive King, a volunteer ambulance driver. Nelly also looked at the Temple of Boom an interesting project born of a desire to reimagine the Parthenon as well as to Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation’s Deputy Chair Peter Konidaris about the board’s ambitious plans.
The glory of ancient Greece arrives in Australia
Salonika Burning, a haunting antiwar novel dive into the past to wake us up to the present
Temple of Boom – homage to the Parthenon in the heart of Melbourne revealed
Konidaris: “Melbourne to be the best arts and culture precinct in Asia Pacific”
Iris Papathanasiou
Iris Papathanasiou who writes in English and Greek looked at the historic role of individuals and communities of Hellenic background in Australia. Iris has a knack at presenting the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.
Her feature on two couples from the Rizoma village and their settlement and life in Australia is a deep and reflective piece looking how the village life left behind was recreated in Melbourne. In her feature on a local Greek Australian amateur marathon runner, she examines the willpower and passion of an individual and her ability to find links between Uluru and her own heritage.
We created our own village here in Australia
Emmanuel Dakis: The Legend of Chapel Street
Marathon Uluru: “It’s just the sky and the ground. As far as your eye can see”
Thomas Paizes
Our new addition to the Neos Kosmos team, Thomas Paizes hit the ground running. His report on the contentious Preston Market redevelopment plans had an impact and certainly on the developers’ plans. His report on the Moreland (Merri-beck) Council Greens who took on the local soccer clubs and one of their synthetic pitches had significant impact and, in part, forced the Council’s backflip on the issue.
Preston Market’s fate uncertain as Victorian Planning Authority decision looms
Council clashes with Moreland’s football clubs
Night capers in Melbourne’s northern burbs
Zoe Thomaidou
Zoe Thomaidou produced a plethora or features for Neos Kosmos in 2022 in Greek and English. Zoe interviewed Melbourne based cookbook author Meni Valle, whose latest offering on the food of Ikaria as made it to French cookbook shelves. Zoe tackled the booming IVF industry in Greece and its linkages to new medical tourism. She also examined the linkages between migration and the eternal homeland with her feature on how some Greek soil and the plant in it became a metaphor for the continuation of place and time in migration.
Australian cookbook on ‘Ikaria’ makes it to French bookstores
Yiayia’s ‘smuggled’ soil from Greece still giving life in Bundoora home
Ioannis Sofianos
Ioannis Sofianos a journalist trained in Greece has been a major contributor to the Greek and the English editions. His work is diverse and well researched. In his study of Spiridoula and Dimitris Floratos in Building the dream for a better life in Australia is the essence of good story telling.
“Building” the dream of a better life in Australia
Contributors
We are grateful to the many contributors we have for providing educated insights into key issues. We have many contributors but selected the more regular ones here for this list.
Dean Kalimniou
A regular contributor and polymath who looks at issues of Hellenism, history, culture and our diaspora with intellectual vigour, alacrity and humour.
The hidden history of the Parthenon
Joel Christensen
Professor Joel Christensen is the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at Brandeis University, he looked at Ancient Greece to try and find answers to complex modern issues such as the war in Ukraine.
Iliad – lessons for modern society
The terrible logic of imperialism: Might makes right
Kosmos Samaras
Kosmos Samaras is a pollster and the former Deputy Director for the ALP and a regular politico on the ABC and other media, he provided Neos Kosmos with sharp and erudite analyses of federal and state elections.
James Arvanitakis
Professor James Arvanitakis – is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation and the former Executive Director of the Australian American Fulbright Commission, he provided sharp and detailed reflections on a range of Australian cultural and political issues.
The Religious Discrimination Bill: How it all went wrong
Four insights from the Djokovic Saga
Theodora Gianniotis
Theodora Gianniotis is from International Organising Committee, Australia, for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles and she has very good pieces on the return of the Parthenon Marbles and a reflection of ethnographic photographer, Effy Alexakis’ projects.
Parthenon Sculptures need the light of the Acropolis Museum not the grey of London
