Lena Stefanou is an archaeologist - museologist. Her research interests evolve around the ideological uses of the past in the present, as these are shaped through museum and heritage representations, community engagement, memory practices, cultural tourism and education, i.e. the predominant fields that shape the intimate relationship of various social groups with the past.
From 2008 until 2013 Lena was teaching Museum Studies and Museum Education as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Pre-School Education and the Educational Design, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece. From 2014-2023 she was teaching at the Hellenic Open University the module "Aspects of Cultural Phenomena" in the MSc course "Cultural Organisations Management". She has also taught Museum and Heritage Studies in various other Greek universities (Athens University of Economics and Business, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Western Macedonia, University of Western Greece, Democritus University of Thrace, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), and was a guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge (UK), Bologna (IT), Quebec (CAN), Tainan (TW), and Brown (USA).
Lena holds a BA degree in Archaeology (2002) from the Department of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She obtained her MA degree in Maritime Archaeology (2003) from the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK, and her master thesis explores the relationship of Greek maritime museums and national identity in modern Greece.
She conducted a PhD (2008) at the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK, under the supervision of Professor Yannis Hamilakis, funded by the Foundation of State Scholarships (IKY). Her PhD Thesis is entitled "Aspects of Identity and Nationhood: Commemorating, Representing, and Replicating the Greek Maritime Past". It investigates the ideological parameters which govern the Greek maritime heritage representations in connection to the underpinning of narratives about modern Greek national identity, as these are shaped through a series of representation and memorialisation practices, namely maritime museum displays, ancient ship reconstructions, naval commemorative ceremonies, and naval-battle re-enactments. Issues of agency, such as the production of national maritime narratives by private agents, the role of Orthodox religion in maritime heritage representations, and the interaction of the local and the national within Greek maritime communities, are vital for the contextual approach of the interaction of nationalism with the uses of the material past.
For the last ten years she has been working and teaching for The Heritage Management Organization - HERITΛGE, based in Athens - GR, the annual International Summer School entitled "Community Engagement in Heritage" and many capacity building workshops on the same topic in Europe and the Global South.
