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Dr Eleni Kefala

Deputy Head of School

Senior Lecturer

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 3655

Email

ek30@st-andrews.ac.uk

Office

Room 27

Location

United Colleges

Office hours

Friday 1-2, 4-5

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Biography

Eleni Kefala holds an MPhil and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and a BA from the University of Cyprus. She has been Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Early Career Fellow of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, and Dumbarton Oaks Fellow at Harvard. In 2025 she was awarded a 3-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for her project, "Deserts of Modernity: Nature and History in 19th-Century Pampa and Patagonia". Her monograph The Conquered won the 2022 Edmund Keeley Prize. She is a two-time recipient of the State Poetry Prize in her home country, as well as the recipient of the Academy of Athens G. Athanas Poetry Award. She��served on the jury of the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Research areas

Eleni's research examines modernity across different periods, disciplines, and cultures and has taken the form of several monographs, an edited volume, and over a dozen refereed articles, among others. She enjoys adopting novel interdisciplinary approaches by bringing together literature and a range of artistic media as well as by exploring new comparative avenues in transcultural projects on Nahuatl and post-Byzantine poetry, Argentine and Greek cultures, Pre-Columbian and Byzantine civilizations, and Environmental Humanities.

She currently works on her book-length project "Deserts of Modernity: Nature and History in 19th-Century Pampa and Patagonia", for which she has received a 3-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2026-2029).

Her latest publication, , sits at the intersection of environmental studies, Byzantine Studies, early and late modern studies, and decolonial/postcolonial studies. The short monograph is part of the series Cambridge Elements in Environmental Humanities. The unusual comparison of Byzantium and America builds on her award-winning monograph The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity��(see below).��

Eleni's AHRC-funded monograph on cultural modernity and urban space with the title Buenos Aires Across the Arts: Five and One Theses on Modernity, 1921-1939��(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022; series "Pitt Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas") looks at the interaction between modernity and modernism in literature (poetry and prose), photography, film, and painting in Argentina in the 1920s and 1930s. The book is available from the��.

Her monograph, The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity,��which��inaugurated the Dumbarton Oaks series "Extravagantes" (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2020), is available from .��The Conquered rehistoricizes the conquests of the Byzantine and Mexica empires and their role in modernity’s self-imagining by probing collective memory and cultural trauma in laments (threnoi��and��icnocuicatl) for the fall of Constantinople and Tenochtitlan, composed soon after the conquest of the imperial cities in 1453 and 1521 respectively. Listen to the – Ethan Besser Fredrick speaking with Eleni Kefala about The Conquered. You can also listen to her conversation with Prof Anthony Kaldellis for the podcast series "" and read about the book's conception on the website of the. The Conquered won the , which is awarded biennially by the Modern Greek Studies Association. The Conquered was published in Greek ( trans. Panagiotis Soultanis) by Crete University Press in 2024.��

Eleni’s earlier published work includes an edited volume on cultural identity in Spanish America since 1492 (2011) and��a comparative monograph on crosscurrents in Argentine and Greek literary modernisms, never before studied together (2007).��She has published extensively in professional journals,��translated poetry and short stories from the Spanish and English, and authored three poetry books.

Her latest poetry book (Athens: Perispomeni, 2024) received the State Poetry Prize in Cyprus (2025) as well as the Academy of Athens G. Athanas Poetry Award (2025). The book was also shortlisted for the State Poetry Prize in Greece (2025). Her second book Time Stitches (Greek: Χρονορραφία; Athens: Nefeli, 2013) was also awarded Cyprus' State Poetry Prize in 2014. is available in English in Peter Constantine's translation (Deep Vellum/Phoneme, 2022). The book was�� a "Globetrotting" pick and featured on the list of "8 Poetry Collections in Translation to Read in 2022" by . Constantine's translation of Time Stitches won the 2022 . The book was published in German as (trans. Peter Constantine) by Freigeist Verlag in 2025 and is forthcoming in French in Michel Volkovitch's translation (Miel des Anges, February 2026). Her debut poetry collection Memory and Variations (Greek: Μνήμη και παραλλαγές; Athens: Planodion, 2007) was shortlisted for the prestigious Diavazo Literary Awards in Greece (First Book Award).

Eleni's poetry has been translated into English, Bulgarian, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish. She has participated in international literary festivals, most recently in Mexico, representing Cyprus as part of the EU delegation of authors at the 2023 International Book Fair of Guadalajara.

Eleni contributes to all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in the Department of Spanish and the School of Modern Languages. She offers classes on a range of disciplines (literature, photography, painting, film), national literatures (Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay, Chile), and genres (poetry, short story, novel, essay).

Visit Eleni's page on Academia.edu:��

Links

PhD supervision

• Manuel Del Callejo��Del Callejo Castellanos
• Natalia��Hernandez Somarriba

Selected publications

• Kefala, E., 1 Jan 2025, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 78 p. (Elements in environmental humanities)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E., 1 Mar 2022, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. 253 p. (Illuminations: cultural formations of the Americas)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E., 7 Dec 2020, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University Press. 166 p. (Extravagantes; vol. 1)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E. & Constantine, P. (Translator), 15 Nov 2022, Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum. 200 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E., 1 Jun 2024, Athens: Perispomeni Publishing. 149 p. (Synchronē hellēnikē poiēsē (Ekdoseis Perispōmenē); vol. 80)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E. & Soultanis, P. (Translator), 5 Dec 2024, Athens: Crete University Press. 232 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E., 2007, Peter Lang. 303 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Kefala, E. (Editor), 2011, Blackwell. 212 p. (The Bulletin of Latin American Research Book Series)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Open access
  Kefala, E., 2016, In: History of Photography. 40, 4, p. 388-412

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Kefala, E., Jan 2020, Jorge Luis Borges in Context. Fiddian, R. (ed.). Cambridge University Press, (Literature in Context).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

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