Maria Voyouka-Sereti

BA, Political Science, University of Athens; MA, Political Science, University of Athens; PhD, Sociology, Stony Brook University

Dr. Maria Vouyouka-Sereti earned her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Athens, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D.in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She began her career as an Assistant Professor in Urban Sociology at the College of Staten Island. Her research interests included immigrant communities and economic sociology, and her published work focused on Greek immigrant entrepreneurs in New York. Later, she served as the Director of Educational Affairs at the Onassis Foundation (USA) in New York for 12 years, where she organized and coordinated international, multidisciplinary academic programs and special events involving hundreds of scholars, artists, and over 500 University Departments, Research Centers, Thinktanks, museums, and other major educational and cultural institutions across North, Central, and South America. Currently, she is an Associate Lecturer at Deree-The American College of Greece, teaching courses in Professional and Interpersonal Communication.

Selected Publication

• “The Business of Social Change: Gender and the Ethnic Enclave Economy in the Greek Immigrant Community in Astoria”. pp. 67-81. Women, Gender, and Diasporic Lives. Evangelia Tastsoglou, editor. Lexington Books. A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers UK. 2009.
• “The Evolution of Immigrant Organization of New York”. Eastern Sociological Society Meetings. Paper session on Race and Ethnicity. February 2004.
• “Business Competition and Community in the Greek Enclave of Astoria”. pp. 241-265. Reading Greek America. Edited by Spyros Orfanos. Pella Publishers. New York. 2002