Maria Kouri

Maria Kouri is a Lecturer in Cultural Management at the University of the Peloponnese, Department of History, Archaeology, and Cultural Heritage Management. She has taught undergraduate courses in the Departments of Philology, Theatre Studies, and Economics at the same university, as well as at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and the Technological Educational Institute of Epirus. Her teaching work also includes postgraduate courses at the Hellenic Open University and lectures at universities abroad, including the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois (USA), and Telemark University (Norway). Her teaching, research, and writing focus on various themes of Cultural Policy and Management, such as national and international cultural policy; administration, communication, and education in cultural organizations; audience development; cultural tourism; and cultural heritage and contemporary cultural creation as factors of sustainable development. Her research work includes, among others, postdoctoral research on audience development in Opera in Greece with a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation. As a Fulbright Foundation Scholar, she conducted research at the University of Chicago on the cultural policies of the Greek-American Community of Chicago and the City of Chicago. She has also been honored with a research fellowship as a "Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies Fellow in Comparative Cultural Studies." Alongside her academic career, she has worked in production organization, marketing, and education in cultural organizations in Greece and abroad. She served as an Advisor to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture on matters of internal and external cultural policy and as a Cultural Expert for the Economic and Social Committee of Greece. She graduated top of her class with honors from Panteion University (Department of Communication and Mass Media - State Scholarships Foundation Scholar), holds a Master's Degree in European Cultural Policy and Management (University of Warwick - Friends of Music Society Scholar), and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna (Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft). Finally, she is a scholar of the Richard Wagner Verband Wien and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an honors graduate in Piano from the National Conservatory.