Lecture and discussion with Costis Hadjimichalis

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 from 6.30 – 8.30 pm

Room 5307, CUNY Graduate Center

Free and open to the public

This presentation will discuss long-forgotten conditions of uneven geographical development in the context of the current financial and debt crisis in the Eurozone. The dominant explanations of the crisis are mainly macro-economic and financial but, Professor Hadjimichalis will argue for its geographical components/foundations. After a short descriptive comment about the current debt crisis in the Eurozone and particularly in Southern Europe as part of the wider global crisis, an alternative interpretation is provided based on uneven geographical/regional development among Euro-regions especially after the introduction of the euro. He will also discuss radical alternatives to euro since 2009 with the rise of many grassroots initiatives at different scales in Southern Europe and Greece in particular.

Costis Hadjimichalis is professor Emeritus of Economic Geography and Regional Development at the Department of Geography, Harokopio University Athens. He had previous post at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and was visiting professor at Roskilde University (Denmark), UCLA, Berkely (USA), Oslo (Norway), NIRSA (Ireland) and Macquire University (Australia). His research concerns uneven geographical development and socio-spatial justice in the Eurozone, the social and spatial effects of economic crisis in Southern Europe, the role of small firms in local development and a radical interpretation of landscapes as part of everyday life. He is section editor for Regional Development in the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Elsevier), managing editor of Geographies (a Greek journal) and member of editorial board in several other international journals. His recent books (all in Greek) include: Contemporary Greek Landscapes (editor, 2011), Athens: Melissa, Space in Radical Thinking (co-authored with D. Vaiou, 2012), Athens: Nissos/N. Poulantzas Institute, and Geographies of Capitalist Crisis and Uneven Development, (forthcoming, 2013), Kritiki: Athens.