From the 00s to today
Bio.
I was born in Athens in 1983. I studied Social Anthropology at Panteion University and completed a postgraduate degree in the same field at Goldsmiths, University of London. My relationship with the press began during my student years, when I worked as a substitute proofreader for sports newspapers.
I started working as a journalist in 2007 on Reportage Without Borders, a program on ERT, Greece’s public broadcaster, and in 2008 I continued as a news editor for the live news feed at tvxs.gr. From 2009 to 2014, I worked as a freelancer with magazines and newspapers (including K andTaxidia magazines of Kathimerini, the newspaper Free Sunday, and special editions of the Real Group). During that time, I also worked as content editor for the culture section of thepressproject.gr and collaborated with the British television network ITV, covering a trial in Patras involving British citizens.
Between 2014 and 2016, I worked as content editor for the Sunday travel supplement Taxidi of the newspaper Ethnos. From 2016 to 2024, I was a member of the travel department at Kathimerini, contributing reports to the Sunday magazine Taxidia, the travel series Topoi, K magazine, and the group’s special publications (GB Magazine for the Hotel Grande Bretagne, Costa Navarino Stories, Electra Magazine, the Greece Is series, Limited, Our Mountains and K Women), as well as to the websites kathimerini.gr, ekathimerini.com, and greece-is.com. In 2025, I collaborated with the travel magazine Diakopes and tovima.gr, and since the end of that year, I have been collaborating with travel.gr. For the past three years, I have been involved in a major research project on the past, present, and future of Surveying Engineers, part of which is available here: polytexneio73pedia.gr. In 2019, I also became a full member of the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers (JUADN).
Over the course of my 19-year career in journalism, I have accumulated many memorable reporting assignments: in Berlin, as part of a Greek-German friendship program, with visits to the Federal Foreign Office and the Wannsee Villa; in the Venice of designer Mariano Fortuny; in the villages of the Japanese countryside; in Nicosia and the occupied areas of Cyprus; on Mount Parnassus with livestock farmers from Tithorea; and in Kalamata with fishermen from the Messenian Gulf.
More than anything else, however, I single out two journalistic moments. Not because they were my best work, but because in these cases journalism transcended its usual boundaries and made me part of something larger:
* The first was in 2011, when I was working as a freelance contributor for K, the weekend magazine of Kathimerini. It was a bleak period for the Greek press, with magazines struggling to survive. Beyond that, the editorial identity of K at the time did not really suit me.
It felt as though I was the wrong person in the wrong place. Then something happened that I’m not sure was entirely appropriate, but it was certainly remarkable. I wrote a feature article (“Young, Educated, Struggling to Make Ends Meet”, November 2011) telling the stories of three people who were unable to find work in their field because of the economic crisis. After reading the article, entrepreneur Kaiti Kyriakopoulou contacted Kathimerini and offered to fund their studies. As far as I know, this happened in at least one case.
* The second was in July 2019. Just before going on summer vacation, I was asked by Taxidia, Kathimerini’s travel magazine, to write an article on the ethics of travel. It was a very particular moment in time—a year without major crises, situated between the end of the bailout era and the outbreak of the pandemic. In travel journalism, the concept of sustainability was rapidly gaining prominence and beginning to reshape the way people thought and wrote about travel.
I wrote the article, submitted it, and went on vacation. At the end of the summer, it was published under the title “How Ethical Are We as Travelers?” Much later, I learned by chance—from a cousin of mine, who was a high school student at the time—that the article had been included in the National Question Bank for the final year of Greek high school. This means that, if a teacher chooses to do so, it can be taught in the classroom as part of the Modern Greek Language and Literature curriculum.
© Nikos Kokkas
I created this website in the spring of 2026, a few months after completing the Google Ads, YouTube Ads & Analytics seminar at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA). I built it partly to have a comprehensive portfolio that I could present in place of a traditional résumé, and partly to take stock of my own journey just before reaching the twenty-year mark of my career. To see where I started, which paths I followed, and where I stand today.
As I gathered material for this website, I noticed a significant shift in my interests. In my twenties and thirties, I enjoyed reporting on urban life, music, and the arts. Today, in my forties, I find myself drawn more to nature, the sea, primary production, and, above all, archaeology. Ten years ago, I was attending workshops on translation and experimental writing; now I attend seminars on marketing and the digital world. In other words, I have gradually turned toward subjects that are more practical and more grounded in everyday reality.
The seminar I attended at EKPA was instrumental in the creation of this website, as it gave me the confidence to engage more actively with the digital world.
It provided me with the tools to become familiar with different digital platforms and to learn how to solve technical problems on my own. Eventually, this led me to purchase a domain name, web hosting (in Germany), and backup hosting (in France). I built the site from scratch, organized and categorized the material, gathered photographs, links, and texts, and filled it with content that reflects and summarizes my professional journey.
In addition to published articles, the website also features original texts (in the Blog section) and independent projects I have participated in over the past ten years, in both Greek and English.
Enjoy!
Leave a Reply