On Thursday, 5 June 2025, the Dean’s Office at the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) held a graduation ceremony for undergraduate students from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (PRC) who successfully attended the 2024-2025 Programme of Study for Hellenists from China, as part of the general bilateral cooperation agreement and the specific ones signed between our Institution and its counterparts in the People’s Republic of China.
In particular, during the current academic year, 10 students from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies completed the above-mentioned programme at the School of Philosophy.
The students from the People’s Republic of China attended the modules ‘Introduction to Linguistics’ and ‘Greek Mythology’ offered by the teaching staff at the Department of Philology.
They also enrolled in an intensive course in Modern Greek organized by the Modern Greek Language Teaching Centre-Panagiotis Kontos of NKUA and received a foreign language certification in the Greek language. Their progress in learning Greek was impressive, as was evidenced by the presentations they gave on their graduation day.
Addressing the ceremony were the Dean of the School of Philosophy and Academic Coordinator of the Programme, Professor Dimitrios Drosos, and the President of the Modern Greek Language Teaching Centre-Panagiotis Kontos, former Vice-Rector of NKUA, Professor Dimitrios Karadimas.
The occasion was graced by the presence of the former Dean of the School of Philosophy, Professor Emerita Eleni Karamalegkou. In fact, it was during her term of office that the above cooperation programme between NKUA and Universities in the People’s Republic of China was initiated.
Also in attendance at the event were Ms Eleni Ntanou, a member of the teaching staff at the Department of Philology, as well as Mses Georgia Mouzakiti and Paraskevi-Christina Tzovara, members of the teaching staff at the Modern Greek Language Teaching Centre-Panagiotis Kontos.
The students showcased Greece through their eyes, using texts, videos, poems of their own or by Greek poets, and artwork. They captured their impressions from their ‘journey’ to the School of Philosophy and Greece, highlighting key elements of Greek culture and comparing them to equivalent aspects of Chinese society. Finally, they left the audience with a moving musical ‘goodbye’ performed in both the Greek and the Chinese languages.
