Assistant Professor
Office 916, 9th floor, School of Philosophy
Phone: 210-7277470
Office Hours: Friday 10.00-12.00
E-mail: gvarzel[at]theatre.uoa[dot]gr
She serves in the Department of Theatre Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, at the rank of associate professor (first appointment in 2009 as a lecturer). After graduating from the undergraduate and postgraduate programs of the same department, she conducted the research for her doctoral thesis in the State Archive of Venice, as a scholar of the Academy of Athens, at the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies. The thesis was published in 2011 (Commedia Cretese e vita qvotidiana: La relazione tra l’immagine scenica e la società nella città di Candia durante la venetocrazia, Athens-Venice: Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies publ., Series "Tommaso Flangini", 2011). She carried out research missions to the Vatican, in the Archive of the Propaganda Fede, within the framework of the program of the Academy of Athens entitled “Greek theatre and drama in the era of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Ottoman Empire” (2002, 2003) and worked at the Center for Research on Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens as a scientific associate (2004-2009). She has participated in several research programs and scientific conferences and has published papers in scientific journals and collective volumes in Greece and abroad, and has taught in undergraduate and postgraduate seminars in Athens, Venice and Prague. She has edited various scientific volumes and Proceedings of Conferences in Greece and in Venice, and she was the editor of the Scientific Journal of the Department of Theatre Studies, NKUA, Parabasis from 2013 to 2023.
She teaches in the department's undergraduate and graduate curriculum, courses on the History of Medieval and Renaissance Theatre, the History of Modern Greek Theatre (16th-18th cent.) and the Methodology of Theatre Research. She is responsible for the implementation of an English-language course addressed to all the Erasmus undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students of the NKUA, entitled “Contemporary Greece: History, Arts and Letters-Erasmus A and B”. As part of this course, she teaches modern approaches and performances of the Greek Theatre.
She is the academic coordinator of the Erasmus+ program. She has been responsible for the Students' Internship Program and a member of the Library Board of the School of Philosophy /NKUA. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Scholarly Journal Artes Renascentes, semestrale dell'associazione internazionale "Artes Renascentes" and the Scientific Journal of the Department of Theatre Studies, NKUA, Parabasis. For several years she was a member of Ancient Drama and Theatrical Research Laboratory of the Theatre Department (NKUA), while now she has joined the Book History Lab of the same Department. She is a founding and active member of the European Network of Research and Documentation of Performances of Ancient Greek Drama (Arc-Net).
Her research interests include the investigation of the History of Theatre in the Venetian and Latin-occupied regions of Greece (Crete, Ionian Islands, Aegean Sea, 16th-18th centuries) and its archival documentation, the study and reception of the Greek renaissance theatrical texts and their comparative examination with contemporary European Dramaturgy, the theatre in Europe during the Renaissance and up to the 18th century, the everyday life in Venetian-occupied Crete and the publication of relevant archival sources.
