Biography

Christos Tsakas holds a PhD in modern history from the University of Crete (2015). His main fields of interest are European integration history and authoritarian studies. In his dissertation, titled ‘Greek Business and the European Challenge, 1950s–1970s’, by examining the domestic impact of prospective EEC-membership on business–government relations, he analyzes Greece's Europeanization into historical context.Before moving to Florence, Christos was a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University Berlin, working on German-Greek relations in the context of European integration with a view to contributing to debates over the recent euro crisis.As an external researcher at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH he initiated the IMS archives and oral history project, documenting postwar Greek industrialization.He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in postwar German-Greek relations, modern Greek history and authoritarianism in the twentieth century at the Free University Berlin and Ionian University.While at the EUI, he will be working on his new research project, titled ‘The Quest for Enlargement: Greece, Norway, West Germany and the EEC, 1957–1981’. Employing a comparative analysis of the first and the second EEC-enlargement and examining West German attitudes towards the Greek and abortive Norwegian applications in the 1960s and 1970s, his research will focus on direct and indirect business interactions and their impact on the enlargement process. This project, bringing business history insights to bear on debates over the North–South divide in the context of European integration, is envisioned as an initial step for long-term engagement towards the articulation of a non-teleological account of the EEC/EU enlargement.