About DIORAMAS
Our Mission
The DIORAMAS project explores the intricate relationship between diasporic identities and their origins, focusing on how these elements shape Australian-Mediterranean synergies. Our goal is to foster understanding across cultures for public benefit through international, interdisciplinary research collaborations.
We believe in the power of shared stories and academic discourse. Our project employs both established and innovative research methods ranging across field archaeology, archival research, interviews and community engagement, to highlight how homelands influence hostlands and vice versa.
About
DIORAMAS is an international research and public heritage programme dedicated to exploring how island landscapes preserve the long-term relationships between people, place, environment, and memory. Centred on the Mediterranean, DIORAMAS investigates how communities have lived with changing landscapes over thousands of years: how they managed water, cultivated land, moved across difficult terrain, built settlements, used caves and sacred places, responded to environmental stress, and transmitted knowledge across generations.
The programme brings together archaeology, landscape biographies, history, ethnography, archival research, environmental analysis, digital documentation, public engagement, and heritage education. Its aim is not only to study the past, but also to use this knowledge to open new conversations about the present and future of island communities and their diasporas. Many Mediterranean islands today face urgent pressures, including water scarcity, climate change, wildfire risk, overtourism, unplanned development, demographic change, and the abandonment of older agricultural landscapes. DIORAMAS approaches these challenges through the lens of deep time, asking what long-term histories of resilience, adaptation, continuity, and transformation can teach us about sustainable futures.
DIORAMAS is delivered by the University of Sydney (Australia) in collaboration with an international research team of scholars and students from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Cardiff Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil), the University of San Diego (United States),and the University of Melbourne (Australia). Its archaeological fieldwork activities in Greece are under the auspices of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens. The programme also works in collaboration with Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies to support summer school and field training opportunities for Harvard-associated students. Through this international framework, DIORAMAS creates opportunities for research, teaching, fieldwork, community collaboration, and heritage interpretation across borders.
Public engagement is central to DIORAMAS. The programme is committed to producing bilingual educational resources, exhibitions, digital content, field training, and community-facing outputs that make research accessible to local communities, schools, visitors, and diaspora audiences. In particular, DIORAMAS seeks to strengthen the cultural, linguistic, and historical connections between the Australian diaspora and their Mediterranean homelands, recognising that heritage is not confined to the land of origin itself but lives across communities, memories, and generations.
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Who we are
DIORAMAS is directed by a team of three scholars whose combined expertise reflects the programme’s interdisciplinary character.
Professor Tamar Hodos, the John Atherton Young and Alexander Cambitoglou Professor, incorporating the Arthur and Renee George Chair of Classical Archaeology at the University of Sydney, brings internationally recognised expertise in Mediterranean archaeology, material culture, global connectivity, and long-term cultural change.
Dr Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Research Affiliate of the University of Sydney and Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, contributes substantial expertise in historical archaeology, the archaeology of diasporas, and material culture studies.
Dr Konstantinos Trimmis, Research Affiliate of the University of Sydney and Research Fellow of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens, provides extensive expertise in field and landscape archaeology, Aegean prehistory, digital heritage, and community-facing research.
Together, these three directors provide the intellectual and practical leadership for DIORAMAS, connecting field research, heritage interpretation, environmental questions, and public engagement. Their shared vision is to create a programme that is academically rigorous, locally grounded, internationally connected, accessible to the wider public, and brings tangible benefit to society.