Goethe-Institut (GI) promotes German language and culture across the globe. Its headquarters are located in Munich. It entertains a worldwide network of, approximately, 160 institutes in 98 countries and is, therefore, the largest mediating organisation for Germany’s foreign cultural and educational policies. GI-Athens is part of this organisational structure and belongs to the legal body of Goethe-Institut e.V.
GI considers language a key qualification for education, employment and intercultural understanding. At a global level, GI promotes the understanding of Europe and develops shared European perspectives: its worldwide network stands for high quality standards and direct contact. GI combines continuity with the willingness to make use of change and innovation in order to master new challenges.
GI-Athens coordinates the CRADLE project. In concert with local partners, we organize events and seminars for German language teachers, which are also available on-line, and conduct seminars related to methodology and didactics or topic-specific advanced trainings.
During the 2014-2017 period, GI-Athens was the Coordinator of the “Schools: Future Labs” project, involving 12 partners, funded by the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership for school education.
The aim of the project was to increase the employability of young people by increasing their interest and achievements in STEM and foreign language subjects.
The project has shown that the methodology employed yields better outcomes in terms of the outcomes and process of learning, both for students and teachers.
TEAM
Sulochana Giesler is the deputy director of the Goethe-Institute in Athens and the director of the Language Department, also responsible for the field of language in Goethe-Institutes in Southeast Europe. She has been in Athens for the last two years, before that she was in Germany and in other regional institutes like Jakarta and Moscow. She has been involved in large projects in different parts of the world and coordinates the Educational Cooperation in the 12 institutes of which she is in charge. She has worked with departments of education in various countries and herself has teaching and training experience.
Penelope Sotiropoulou studied German Language and Literature at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds a Master of Arts in Personnel Management and Development of competences via new media from the Danube University Krems. Since February 2012 she has been working as a project coordinator for the Goethe-Institut Athens in several large scale projects, such as:
- “Pre-integrative Language Training in Southeastern Europe”,
- “Schools: Future Labs”,
- “flight and migration”,
- “CRADLE – Creating Activity Designed Language Learning Environments for Entrepreneurship Education”.
Anna Slavi
is a graduate of the American School of Greece. She did her BA on French language and literature at the University of Athens and obtained her Masters on translation from the University of Strasbourg.
She worked as an intern at Amnesty International, as an adult education teacher in Vienna as well as an assistant in the Education European Programme Grundtvig at the Hellenic Culture Centre.
Since November 2014 Anna is in charge of coordinating Erasmus+ projects at Goethe Institute in Athens.
Iliana Kikidou has been working at the Goethe-Institut branch office Athens since 2003. She began as a German teacher and examiner. Since 2012 she has been in the department of Educational Cooperation as a teacher trainer and trainer for trainers. She coordinates the teacher training course „Deutsch Lehren Lernen“ in Greece and in South Eastern Europe.
She is also involved in other projects in the region concerning the qualification of teachers and workshops with German learners. In 2017 she became Director of Educational Links. She specialises in teacher training and train the trainer courses and has been participating in numerous seminars concerning the quality assurance of these courses. She also has contact with the Institute of Educational Affairs in Greece and the Ministry of Education, as it is part of her work in the department of Educational Cooperation.
