Diasporic Futures: Temporality and Hope in the Transnational Politics of London Cypriots
Dr Evropi Chatzipanagiotidou
This book by Mitchell Institute Fellow Evi Chatzipanagiotidou traces the transnational politics of Greek Cypriots in London during a significant historical period in which space opened for diasporic involvement in peace politics at ‘home’.
British Cypriots have participated in the reproduction of conflict and partition but have also been active agents of peacebuilding and reconciliation.
Focusing on the latter, Diasporic Futures: Temporality and Hope in the Transnational Politics of London Cypriots (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) applies a temporal framework and proposes that diasporas and transnationalism - often analysed through an emphasis on space - must also be understood through an investigation of time. Moreover, Diasporic Futures illustrates that, although imagined as anchored in the past and ‘out of sync’, diasporas are ‘horizonal’, made by their orientations towards the future and a politics of hope.
The author argues against the binary of peace-supporting or peace-wrecking diasporas, and diverts attention to broader political projects of nationalism and state-building and their regulation of diasporic futures.
Dr Evropi Chatzipanagiotidou
Evi Chatzipanagiotidou is a Mitchell Institute Fellow and a Political Anthropologist in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics. Her research interests are in the fields of conflict and peace, migration, displacement and diasporas, and the politics of memory and loss. She has conducted ethnographic research in Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, and the UK, including multi-sited, transnational and trans-border research.
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