Two women hug each other as a boy cries after reaching the shores of the Greek island of Lesvos, a day after the deadly wreck of October 28, 2015. [Santi Palacios/AP] He grabbed a piece of driftwood with one hand and tried to keep his son’s head above water with the other. He’d lost sight…
When you think of the great Greek philosophers, Aristotle’s name is usually at the top of the list, but what about the man Aristotle himself chose to take his place—Theophrastus? Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum, took his mentor’s groundbreaking empirical methods and pointed them in a new direction: inwards. Theophrastus was the man who…
On July 11 and 12, Lesvos plans to host the Sappho Lesvos Festival 2025, a modern cultural institution named after the greatest lyric poet of antiquity, highlighting the island’s connection to its literary and cultural heritage. The festival aspires to act as a cultural ambassador for Lesvos and Greece, showcasing the island and the North…
Fleeing Iran with her husband and toddler, Amena Namjoyan reached a rocky beach of this eastern Greek island along with hundreds of thousands of others. For months, their arrival overwhelmed Lesbos. Boats fell apart, fishermen dove to save people from drowning, and local grandmothers bottle-fed newly arrived babies. Namjoyan spent months in an overcrowded camp….
View of CCAC construction site in Vastria forest, Lesbos, Greece , 21 January 2025. Marion Bouchetel/Thomson Reuters Foundation. What’s the context? An EU-funded centre for migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos has angered locals, who fear wildfires in a protected area. LONDON/MADRID – The pristine pine forest of Vastria on the Greek island of…
We’ve just returned from an incredible spring migration tour on the beautiful island of Lesvos, and what a season it was! This year, we had the pleasure of guiding a small, private group of birdwatchers and bird photographers through some of the island’s most productive and picturesque habitats. 5 Days, 131 Species | Private tailor-made…
With the first birdwatching visitors already arriving in Lesvos, the tourist season is starting with positive omens for the local community. From mid-April, nature lovers from all over the world – known to the locals as “poulakides” – will flood the island’s wetlands, forests, and beaches to observe the region’s rare endemic and migratory birds….
The boat journey is central to the narrative of Mediterranean migration of the undocumented. While the boat itself is flimsy, fragile, unstable, it has powerfully captured the attention of the world—after all, its journey has produced recurring images of migrants washing up along southern Europe’s picturesque beaches in the archive of undocumented migration. As the…
This summer, I spent two months on the island of Lesvos, Greece, the setting of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Pollinators, Climate Change, and the Aegean Archipelago Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). Our team of seven students and four senior researchers from various backgrounds in the U.S. worked to untangle the interacting stressors impacting bees in…
This paper examines Neoclassical architecture, with special attention to some Neoclassical houses in Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece, with a view to articulating the spatio-temporal implications of its characteristic spatial modulations. It is argued that, as the epithet, “Neoclassical”, suggests, its emphasis on geometric forms of a certain kind instantiates an assault on time, and concomitantly an…