Mapping Island Lives

This project stems from another project titled “Eptanesian prosopography, 19th-20th centuries” (in Greek) I completed while working at the Modern Greek History Research Centre of the Academy of Athens. It was originally of an encyclopaedic nature and scope. In my new endeavour I am attempting to limit its coverage and concentrate on features that document, in a more dynamic way, the course of the distinctive political, social and cultural history of the region. It maps the lives of the political, professional and cultural elites of the islands between 1800 and World War Two and follows the transition of their society from the end of the Venetian rule, through the British protectorate and the long process of assimilation into Eastern Greek society. A new database currently under development draws upon published material available in print and on the web, relying increasingly on the latter.

The platform used for the creation of the database is Heurist and the University of Sydney is kindly hosting it on its servers. At the core of the database's structure is the Person entity, which records the main biographical data of each person (name, date and place of birth, date and place of death). Other entities provide information on his/her education, professional career, distinctions, works and bibliographic references. All these entities are directly or indirectly linked to the Person entity, as shown in the diagram on the right.