Caged Histories: Book Launch

You are warmly invited to the launch of Caged Histories: Violence and Resistance in Greek Immigration Detention by Andriani Fili. Caged Histories examines the making and maintenance of immigration detention in Greece, tracing its institutional evolutions, everyday violences, and moments of resistance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it explores how detention is remembered, justified, resisted, and archived, and how its histories shape the present.

The event will include installations featuring images from sites of detention and selected testimonies, drawing on archival and documentary material. Rather than a conventional academic panel, the evening brings together visual material and collective reflection to explore three central themes in the book: history, accountability, and witnessing.

Andriani Fili, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oxford
Andriani will introduce the thematic structure of the event and outline the book’s key ideas.

Lena Karamanidou, Research and Investigation Coordinator, Border Violence Monitoring Network 
Lena will discuss the long, layered, and often concealed genealogies of immigration detention in Greece.

Hindpal Bhui, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Visiting Professor, University of Oxford 
Hindpal will address the distribution of responsibility across state actors, the EU, humanitarian organisations, and civil society, and how accountability is shaped and deferred.

Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology, University of Oxford
Mary will reflect on the ethical demands of seeing, listening, and documenting, considering the politics of presence, interpretation, and return.