Dr Dikaia Gavala received her PhD in January 2023 from the University of Aberdeen, having been a fellow of the interdisciplinary Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL). Her research concerns the drama of the Restoration period and the political theory of the Civil War, focusing on English republicanism and its debates on stage.
She has graduated with honors from the postgraduate degree ‘Literature, Culture and Ideology’ of the Department of English Language and Literature of the University of Athens with her thesis being titled ‘Rebellion and the Notion of the Mob in Tory Partisan Literature.’ She has also graduated with honors from the undergraduate program of the same department during which she has been an Erasmus fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she had completed a three-month study period with honors.
She has taught the undergraduate course ‘Encounters with Shakespeare’, for the University of Aberdeen, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, for two consecutive academic years (2018-2019, 2019-2020) under the supervision of Renaissance expert, Professor Andrew Gordon.
She has presented her doctoral research at various conferences, with fellowships from the Renaissance Society of America (2021), the Center for Renaissance Studies of the Newberry Library (Chicago, 2019) and the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought from Queen Mary University of London (2018).
She has co-organized the seminars ‘Revisiting the Postmodern’, ‘Workshop on Civil Society’, as well as the conference ‘Radical Democratic Citizenship’ for CISRUL. She has also curated a series of episodes for the Podcast ‘What Have These Concepts Ever Done for Us?’ (Sep. 2019-Feb 2020) at the same interdisciplinary center, which was a student initiative aiming to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions on the use of political terms and concepts and their actual applications in various scientific disciplines.
Her first publication refers to pop culture and psychoanalysis: Gavala, D. (2019) ‘Let it Go’: Revising the Princess story in Disney’s Frozen, Gramarye 15, 67-79.
In 2025 the following publication is also going to appear:
- Gavala, Dikaia. ‘The common ties of our Religion…and strict Commerce’: John Dryden’s Amboyna (1673) and its religious preservation of the Old World. Mos Historicus 3. 1 (to be published in 2025)
Since 2024 Dikaia designs and teaches Shakespeare as well as World Dramaturgy undergraduate courses for the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Athens, as an adjunct lecturer.