Researchers
Gonda Van Steen
Gonda Van Steen holds the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in the Department of Classics at King’s College London. She is the author of many articles and six books. Her monograph Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece (2019, in Greek: Ζητούνται παιδιά από την Ελλάδα: Υιοθεσίες στην Αμερική του Ψυχρού Πολέμου, 2021) takes the reader into the uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history. Digging deeper into Greece’s social and family history, Gonda edited The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951 (Routledge, 2024). She recently published an adoption-related playscript with a lengthy introduction, called Adoption Reckonings: For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine (2025). Her current projects delve into the identity dynamics of Greek adoption (hi)stories and incorporate many of the adoptees’ narrated experiences.
Gonda has co-led the multi-year campaign Nostos for Greek Adoptees. The policy efforts of the Nostos team of volunteers drove the specific reforms that the Greek government implemented in April 2025 to restore the Greek citizenship of Greek-born adoptees and to facilitate unfettered access to their adoption records. Gonda has further lent her expertise as a referee to the Joustra Committee investigating intercountry adoptions to the Netherlands (2020-2021), and she has since provided informal advice to the Swedish and South Korean investigative committees. Gonda has also authored or contributed to factsheets and statements meant for submission to the relevant United Nations committees and hearings. Gonda is fluent in English, Flemish-Dutch, French, and German, and is keen to provide similar services putting her language skills and her knowledge of historic intercountry adoptions to good use.
E-mail address: gonda.van_steen@kcl.ac.uk or gondavs@gmail.com.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6743-7608 / Active under ethical clearance received through King’s College London
Publications on intercountry adoptions
Van Steen, G. (2025). Adoption Reckonings: For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine. Anthem Press.
Van Steen, G. (2024). “Opinion: Greek citizenship for Greek-born adoptees: It’s not complicated.” Ekathimerini, 18.12.2024, available at https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/1256591/greek-citizenship-for-greek-born-adoptees-its-not-complicated/.
Van Steen, G. (2024). “For a Pickup Truck: Simply the Rest of an Unruly Greek Adoption History.” Tetradio: Tijdschrift van het Griekenlandcentrum, 32(2023), 71-92, available at https://openjournals.ugent.be/tetradio/article/91986/galley/209994/view/.
Van Steen, G. (2024). “Adoptee Archive Fever: The International Social Service, Archival Policy and Progress in 2022-23.” ArcheioTaxio, 25, available at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/268504145/ARXEIOTAXIO25_final_copy_in_English.pdf.
Van Steen, G. (2023). “Adoption’s Unfinished Business.” In Cardaras, M. (ed.), Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption. Anthem Press, 5-25, available at https://anthempress.com/voices-of-the-lost-children-of-greece-pb.
Van Steen, G. (2022). “Relief from Relief?: Greek-Born Adoptees ‘Talk Back.’” Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media (6), 107-120, available at https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/ExCentric/article/view/9087.
Van Steen, G. (2022). “The United States as a Haven for Greek Revolutionary War Orphans? Myth and Reality.” In Cartledge, Y., & Varnava, A. (eds.), New Perspectives on the Greek War of Independence: Myths, Realities, Legacies and Reflections. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 155-179, available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-10849-5.
Van Steen, G. (2021). Adoption, memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?. University of Michigan Press, available at https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Adoption-Memory-and-Cold-War-Greece2.
Van Steen, G. (2021). “Bring them back!”, The Pappas Post, available at https://doi.org/https://pappaspost.com/opinion-bring-them-back/.
Van Steen, G. (2021). “Of Foundlings and ‘Lostlings’: When the Scopas Scandal Rocked the Unstable Foundations of the First 1950s Intercountry Adoptions.” Annales de démographie historique, 141(1), 123, available at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/166999411/Scopas_Annales_digital_version_final.pdf.
Van Steen, G. (2021). “Sophocles’ Oedipus: Acting on Knowledge of Performance and Adoption”. In Velioti-Georgopoulou, M., Georgopoulou, V. & Karamanou, I. (Eds.), Θέατρο και ετερότητα: Θεωρία, δραματουργία και θεατρική πρακτική. Theatre and Otherness: Theory, Dramaturgy and Theatre Practice: Πρακτικά ΣΤ’ Πανελλήνιου Θεατρολογικού Συνεδρίου, Ναύπλιο, 17-20 Μαΐου 2017. Proceedings of the Sixth Panhellenic Conference in Theatre Studies, Nafplio, 17-20 May 2017 (2021 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 297). University of the Peloponnese.
Van Steen, G. A. H. (2018). “Are We There Yet? The Greek Adoptees’ Road of Return–An Essay.” Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, available at http://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/are-we-there-yet.