Who We Are

Marilena Zackheos: Director of The Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies

Marilena Zackheos holds a BA in Philosophy and a BA in English Language and Literature with a concentration in Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. She also holds an MA in English Studies from Queen Mary, University of London, an MPhil in English and a PhD in English (specializing in Postcolonial Studies) from George Washington University. She has been the Director of The Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies since September 2012. She is also Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Nicosia. Her specializations cover postcolonial literary and cultural studies, diaspora studies, island literatures, gender and sexuality, psychoanalysis and trauma. Her recent work includes a co-edited collection on The Role of Education in a Multicultural Cyprus(forthcoming in 2016), a co-edited collection of essays entitled Vile Women: Female Evil in Fact, Fiction, and Mythology (published by Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2014), and a chapter in Revisiting Sexualities in the 21st Century (by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2015) entitled “Misogynism as Disidentification.” She is active in Literary Agency Cyprus, a group that promotes the Anglophone literatures of Cyprus, as well as of Whirling Words, a Literary Agency Cyprus project for women writers in Cyprus and for women writers with a connection to the island. She is a member also of the following non-profits: Write Cy, Cyprus Academic Dialogue, and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research. She is interested in bringing to the forefront in public discourse individual and collective narratives of interpersonal and interethnic conflict, focusing particularly on cases of reconciliation, resilience, survival and recovery from trauma.

Polina Petrou: Center Assistant at The Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies 

Polina Petrou is a BA student in Law at the University of Nicosia. Since September 2015, she has assumed the position of Center Assistant at the Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies. She there co-manages and co-creates material for the Center’s social media use (https://www.facebook.com/cypruscenterforinterculturalstudies) and website (https://www.unic.ac.cy/research/affiliated-institutions-business-links/ac…). She is also responsible for the promotion and planning of events. Being herself bicultural and bilingual—as she is half Greek-Cypriot and half Russian—she is especially interested in heightening respect for cultural difference and enhancing an understanding of intercultural connections.  Being also a classical ballet and contemporary dancer, she is inspired by the creative initiatives of the Center which promote the diversity of the island’s cultures through also highlighting Cyprus’s diversity of the arts.

Email: [email protected]