Kostis Papaioannou

President of Technopolis City of Athens and former Secretary General for Human Rights Kostis Papaioannou has spent years researching and raising awareness about the surge of racist violence and nationalist extremism across Greece and other Western countries, exploring ways in which democracies can defend themselves against the emergence of post-fascism, a new strain of far-right radicalism that repackages and normalizes old-school fascism for a contemporary audience. He is the director of “Simeio”, a grassroots collective dedicated to research and action against the rise of the new far right, and a member of Golden Dawn Watch, an initiative to monitor the trial against the Greek far-right organization, Golden Dawn. He has also published two books that serve as eye-opening chronicles of the rise of the new far right in Europe: Wild Tale for Grown Kids – From Fascism to Post-Fascism. Democracy Against the New Far Right and The ‘Clean Hands’ of Golden Dawn: Applications of Nazi Purity. He has studied History, with a Master’s degree in Political Science, and teaches at the Lycée Franco-Hellénique Eugène Delacroix. He has also worked in the fields of adult and cross-cultural education, leading professional development workshops for teachers with a focus on human rights, social equity and anti-racism. He was co-founder and co-ordinator of the Racist Violence Recording Network and has served as President of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights (GNCHR) and Director of the Greek section of Amnesty International.