Vasilis Galis

Background

Vasilis Galis studied economics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (1996-2001). His first contact with the University of Linköping was during spring semester 1999 when he participated in the European exchange program "ERASMUS". He began his doctoral studies in September 2001 at the Department Of Technology and Social Change. In December 2006, he defended his thesis “From Shrieks to Technical Reports: technology, disability, and political processes in building Athens metro”. The analysis of the study focused on different actors, socio-political processes, and everyday practices that affected the development of a huge infrastructural project, namely Athens metro, through a social sciences perspective. Particularly, the study raised questions regarding how accessibility/disability were actualized for the first time in the planning and design of the Greek built environment and in particular on the process of building the biggest and most complicated transport project in Greece, the Athens metro. At the same time, the study described the evolution of disability organizations in Greece: they changed from being weak actors who were unable to influence socio-political configurations to actors that successively gained attention within the public administration, political organs, the Greek Parliament and the company that constructed the metro.

The study discusses how disability organizations and the metro were developed and influenced each other and how important forums, where several actors with diverse interests problematized and produced different perspectives on disability, were initiated. These forums constituted public spaces within the public administration and eventually contributed to the construction of an accessible metro network. The analysis was also connected to Athens hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2004 that created increasing demands for constructing an accessible built environment, including the metro. Furthermore, the study also drew upon the discussion within the EU on disability and on which kind of consequences this discussion implied for the developing metro.

In December 2007, Vasilis became the Study Director for the International Masters Program in Science, Technology and Society at the Department of Technology and Social Change.

Since January 2009, Vasilis is working at the Department of Technology and Social Change as an assistant professor.

 

Academic interests

Galis' research focuses on how social interests are co-produced with and implicated in developing infrastructures. He concentrates on concerned groups (such as persons with disabilities) and how they seek to intervene in the development of the built environment (transport networks) regarding accessibility and mobility.

Key words
co-production, social interests, accessibility, transport networks, transport disability, Science & Technology Studies, Research methodology, Actor-network theory, disability theory

Teaching and administrative experience 

In December 2007, Galis became the Study Director of the International Master’s Program in Science, Technology and Society (ESST). Since September 2010, the ESST master program has successfully joined forces with another master program within the margins of the Department of Thematic Studies (International Master’s in Science for Sustainable Development) where Galis work as the assistant program director.

Galis has been responsible and taught (both in English, Swedish and Greek) for a number of courses on undergraduate, master and doctoral level from 2001 to 2010. Moreover, Galis has supervised several master theses.