Panayis Panagiotopoulos was born in Paris in 1971. He studied Political Science at the University of Athens, Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales with Michel Wieviorka, and Philosophy at the University of Paris X-Nanterre with Étienne Balibar. He taught at the Department of Political Science of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the Open University of Patras. Since 2006, he has been teaching at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the National and Kapodistrias University of Athens, where he is Associate Professor of Sociology. Topics of his research include the imprisonment of Greek communists and the memory of the victims of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, the ethics of communist parties, phenomenology and sociology of terrorism and political violence, the dynamics of social and cultural modernization in post-political times, and experiences in dealing with technological disasters in Greece during the second half of the 20th century.