Orestis Tzirtzilakis is a second-year DPhil Candidate in Medieval and Modern Languages at Merton College. Before Oxford, he studied Philosophy and the Arts (with a focus on Film Studies) at the University of Patras and the University of Warwick.

His research traverses between the fields of Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis and Film and Media Studies. His doctoral thesis, titled 'A Cultural Genealogy of Modern Greek Hysteria, 19th–20th Century', focuses on ‘minor’ ways hysteria has challenged both an ‘official’ history of the disease and a culturally specific narrative of Greekness. Hysteria, as it is overappropriated in artistic practices, becomes a topos that different discourses on identity and belonging converge and diverge. Hence, his thesis aims to analyse the moments where hysteria is manifested in limit cases, varying from 19th-century literature to 20th-century cinema and performance.