Emily Markides

Emily Markides received her doctoral degree in Counselor Education at the University of Maine, her MA in German Literature and a second MA in French Literature. She used to teach French and German courses and now teaches on the environment. She has also served as a Commonwealth Peace Consultant on the divided island of Cyprus, her place of origin.

Emily’s areas of special interest are the creation of sustainable and EcoPeace communities, spirituality, and permaculture design which melds ecology, agriculture and human settlement. She wrote her dissertation on Complementary Energetic Practices: An Exploration into the World of Maine Women Healers, her German Master’s Thesis on The Poetics of Time in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, and her French Master’s Thesis on Julia Kristeva: De la Pratique Signifiante a la Constitution du Sujet. She has written articles on “Creating a Stable World Peace,” “From Poetry to Community Building,” and “Energetic Healing and its Correspondence to Eastern Orthodox Spirituality.” The ideals that have inspired her work over the years, in terms of both theory and praxis, have been in the area of institution building. She has pursued those ideals in Cyprus by becoming the founder of a Women’s Studies Center/Peace Center and the International Eco-Peace Village. She also helped to launch a new program in Peace Studies at the University of Maine and served as its first Interim Director from 1988-91. Since 2004 she has founded and served as President of ESTIA, The International EcoPeace Community (www.estiamaine.org). Emily is committed to issues of personal, social and global change, spirituality, peace and ecological sustainability. She came to Mapping Meaning with her daughter, Vasia, to present her current vision of transforming her hometown of Famagusta, a hostage ghost city surrounded by armed Turkish guards, into an Ecopolis.

2012 Participant