Round Table: Studies, Work, and a Return to Learning: New Life Pathways
Georgios Koulaouzidis, Associate Professor of Adult Education, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University
Georgia Pateridou, Associate Professor of Modern Greek Philology, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University
Maria Martzoukou, Assistant Professor of Language Development, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University
Georgia Pateridou studied French language and literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and modern Greek studies at King’s College, London. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, U.K. and has been a visiting fellow at Princeton University (Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies).
She is associate professor of modern Greek literature at the Hellenic Open University, teaching at the programmes of ‘Studies in Greek Civilization’ and ‘Creative Writing’ courses on modern Greek literature and literary theory.
Her administrative duties include being a member of the Internal Evaluation Committee of the Humanities School.
She has published in the field of her research in Greek, English and French Journals and in collective volumes. She is supervising a research programme on the subject of disability in literature.
Her latest work is the introduction to the novel of Rodis Roufos Graikyloi (‘Little Greeks’) which was republished by Hestia in 2022.
Vassilios S. Verykios is Vice Rector of Student Welfare at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) and Professor of Data Management at its School of Science and Technology, ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally (Elsevier) and among leading Greek computer scientists (Research.com). He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Purdue University and a degree from the University of Patras, and has held academic positions at Drexel University and the University of Thessaly before joining HOU, where he now serves as Professor, postgraduate program director, and founder/director of the Big Data Analytics and Anonymization Lab. With extensive administrative and research experience, he has contributed to numerous international projects, published over 250 scientific papers with more than 13,000 citations, and actively participates in major conference committees (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, KDD) and editorial roles in high-impact journals. His research focuses on artificial intelligence, data science, data management, privacy and security, knowledge discovery, and software systems.
Dr. Maria Martzoukou is a psycholinguist and neurolinguist with postgraduate studies from the University of Essex, where she graduated with distinction, and a PhD from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, awarded with honors. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research was supported by competitive scholarships, and she has also participated in more than eight research projects, including recent work on language development and language teaching for non-native populations (ACTIN). Since 2016–2017, she has been a member of the Hellenic Open University’s postgraduate programme, “Educational Sciences: Special Education and Education of Individuals with Oral and Written Language Difficulties,” where she has contributed substantially to the organisation of the EAG51 module and currently serves as its coordinator. Her research focuses on typical monolingual and bilingual language development, as well as developmental and acquired language and cognitive disorders. Her work has been published in conference proceedings and leading international academic journals.
George A. Koulaouzides studied applied mathematics, adult education, and counselling. He is an Associate Professor of Methodology of Adult Education at the Hellenic Open University (HOU), where he also serves as Director of the Master of Arts in Adult Education. In addition, he is the Director of the Centre for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and the Laboratory of Biographical Learning and Transformative Adult Education at HOU.
He has designed the widely recognized, accredited training programme for instructors of the National Centre for Public Administration in Greece and possesses extensive experience in the training of trainers. George is widely regarded as a key figure in advancing the internationalization of the Greek adult education community. His research interests include adult learning, transformative learning, educational biography, and critical reflection. He has translated eight books in the fields of adult education and qualitative research, and he has edited academic journals as well as several textbooks. His published work includes more than 100 papers in journals, edited volumes, and conference proceedings. In 2019, he was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.
