Speaker Bio

Dr. Sophia Handaka is Curator of World Cultures at the Benaki Museum in Athens and Co-Founder and Host of the CoMuseum International Conference. In both roles, she advances collaborative and community-led cultural practice, positioning museums as key drivers of social transformation and a more sustainable future and promoting values-based leadership in and through culture. She holds a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford and has over twenty-five years of professional experience in culture, heritage, and museums. Her work spans exhibitions, publications, public programmes, research projects, partnerships, consultancy, public talks and university teaching. She is a member of the Hellenic U.S. Alumni, and Bosch Alumni networks, as well as Culture for Change, and a 2019 Fellow of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. In 2023, she co-authored a policy study on Greece’s cultural and creative sector (diaNEOsis). Her recent exhibition Africa Amongst Us* (Benaki Museum, 2025) was widely recognised for its democratic approach.