The Center of Maritime History provides a three-year scholarship for a doctoral dissertation on maritime history, sponsored by the AEGEUS Foundation.

The Maritime History Scholarship 2019-2021 of the Centre of Maritime History of IMS-FORTH won Angelos Drougoutis.

1. The Institute for Mediterranean Studies will host the 6^th Conference of the Mediterranean Maritime History Network (MMHN) in Rethymno in May 2024 

   MMHN organises an international conference every four years. Originally planned to take place in 2022, the event was rescheduled due to restrictions of COVID-19 pandemic. MMHN conferences are international events aimed to bring together historians, researchers and students to promote the development of Mediterranean Maritime History, fostering an exchange of ideas and knowledge.
    

2. Historical Change in the Ancient Aegean 
   A conference in honour of John K. Davies
    

3. The Greek Merchant Shipping in the Years of Eleftherios Venizelos, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, Piraeus, 31/01/2020 - 01/02/2020 

   “Greek Merchant Shipping in the Years of Eleftherios Venizelos” is the theme of the conference co-organized by the National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos” and the Institute of Mediterranean Studies on Friday January 31, and Saturday February 1, in the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, in Piraeus.
   The conference is under the auspices of the Ministry of Maritime & Island Policy and is held with the support of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation and the Attica Branch of the National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos”. The sponsors of the conference are Eastern Mediterranean Maritime and ANEK Lines.
    

4. International Conference of the Centre of Maritime History “Visions, Vows and Wonders: Religion and the Sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, 15th-19^thcenturies”, 12-13 October 2018 in collaboration with the Southern Connecticut State University, US, where 16 professors from the United States, England, Cyprus, Italy, Turkey and France took part. The conference was financed by the Foundation “AEGEAS” and Grecotel. (Programme)

   The aim of the conference was to discuss the “lived religion” of the relation of man with the sea. In the last fifty years Greek historiography has produced a remarkable array of academic works employing different methodologies and has undertaken various interpretive propositions and methods. Nevertheless, religious history in Greece has remained under the purview of theologians and clerics rather than historians and social scientists. Admittedly, there is a substantial amount of anthropological studies of religion. Still, academic interchange between researchers is not systematic, and the interaction between historical research and theoretical propositions is still at an early stage. As a result, and despite the individual efforts of anthropologists and social historians, Greek academic production has not yet acquired the substantial share that befits it in both Greek and in international circles. One could argue that in Greece we still lack an autonomous field of religious history.

   The above considerations have prompted us to undertake the organization of the first International Conference of Religious History in Rethymno, Crete. Our aim is to offer an opportunity for domestic and international researchers to come together and to engage in academic dialog and critical review from a variety of academic fields and/or theoretical approaches. Utilizing the already developed field of maritime history in Greece, we consider the sea a connecting element that allows us to promote research into ‘lived religion’ as it was experienced in and around the Eastern Mediterranean.
    

5. «What is Maritime History», Ιnternational Symposium in memoriam Skip Fischer, Rethymnon, 25-26 April 2018 (Programme)

   The symposium inaugurated the new Centre of Maritime History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies and was meant to bring together prominent members of the group of Maritime Historians that have marked the path of Maritime History in the last forty years. The aim was to discuss the main developments of Maritime History in the last twenty years. Professor Lewis R. (Skip) Fischer (1946-2018) was one of the “patriarchs” of Maritime History and paved the way of its organization worldwide since the 1980s. He had looked very much forward to this meeting but unfortunately he passed away on 11 February 2018. We have thus decided to dedicate this First Symposium to him, hoping to continue his work from this part of the world.

   The Symposium was funded by “Maria Tsakos” Foundation.
    

6. Seafaring Lives Getting on Board
   First Workshop of the ERC Starting Grant 2016 project
   Seafaring Lives in Transition. Mediterranean Maritime Labour and Transport during Globalization, 1850s-1920s, Rethymnon, 6-7 October 2017

   The workshop organized by Institute for Mediterranean Studies/Foundation of Research and Technology – Hellas and is included in the international research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 714437). The workshop aimed at enabling the members of the project to introduce themselves, present and discuss a research agenda, questions and some first results of the archival research. The Keynote Lecture was given by Professor Gopalan Balachandran of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva with title: Sailors beyond ships and seas: modern seafarers in history and society”.

The maritime history collection includes:

1. Collection of digital and printed documents from national and international archives and libraries. The Archival Collection comprises indicatively:

   • British and French Consular Report Series about the Mediterranean and Black Sea ports, 19^th and 20^th centuries.

   • Documents of shipping companies like Stamatios G. Empiricos from Andros belonging to the Kairis Library.

   • Notarial Series from the town of Galaxidi, in the 19th century.

2. Specialized Maritime History Library with titles in Greek, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French and Russian languages in various topics including trade, shipping, transportation, ship and shipbuilding technology, commercial and shipping businesses, emigration and diaspora, port history, slave trade, environmental history, maritime labour history, naval history, history of the oceans and the seas etc.