Alexandra Pascalidou


Alexandra Pascalidou is a Greek-Swedish columnist, television hostess, and author. She is also a frequent lecturer, discussion leader, and human rights activist.

Life and career

Pascalidou became known to the public in 1995 when she began hosting the multicultural television show Mosaik on SVT, one of Sweden's public service channels. Along with Michael Alonzo, Dogge Doggelito, and Cissi Elwin, Pascalidou was a prominent figure in the Swedish part of Europarådet anti-racism campaign "All Different All Equal", known in Sweden under the working title "Youth Against Racism” in the mid-1990s. In 2000–01 she hosted Som sagt on SVT, a Saturday night program with a focus on literature and language topics. At the same time, she was a producer and reporter for the television show Striptease that focused on investigative journalism.
In 2004, Pascalidou hosted the Olympics in Athens for SVT, following which she lived in Greece for two years, hosting various television shows including, for example, Friday night entertainment on ERT covering a day spent with such well-known personalities as Roberto Cavalli, Isabel Allende, and Roger Moore, among others. She also hosted a three-hour live Greek morning television program every day. She was the hostess for the Eurovision Song Contest in Greece in 2005, and a commentator in Kiev the year when Greece won the competition for the first time. In the same year Pascalidou hosted Melodifestivalen in Sweden from Gothenburg.
In January 2007, she became one of five hostesses of Sweden's TV4 Förkväll, a daytime lifestyle program. She participated in the show Pokermiljonen on TV4 and was hostess for a series of charity galas on SVT, for example, På flykt with Kjell Lönnå and Uppesittarkväll with Anders Lundin.
Pascalidou is a columnist and freelance writer in newspapers such as GP and Expressen. She has blogged continually on Metrobloggen until the newspaper ended their relationship. She gives lectures on diversity and the media, democracy and justice issues, rhetoric and leadership, gender and cultural competence.
She has also served on the Board of BRIS and the board of Kvinnojouren Terrafem working with women's rights against men's violence. She is involved in women's health and is a member of the 2.6Miljoner Klubben and a mom's ambassador to RFSUs campaign. She sits on the board of the foundation, which helps young people in troubled areas with their homework to help them succeed academically and get access to secondary education.
It was announced on 21 January 2016 that Pascalidou would host the semi-final allocation draw for Eurovision 2016, along with Jovan Radomir, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Pascalidou is the founder of the criticized and the winner of the New Academy Prize in Literature will be announced in December 2018.

Plagiarism and ghost writing

Alexandra has been accused several times of plagiarism and using ghost writers. Two instances of plagiarism have been exposed: in 2003 she copied large parts of text written by the journalist Daniel Hernandez for the Los Angeles Times, and in 2015 she was fired from the newspaper Metro after it was revealed that she had translated a Turkish poem by Aziz Nesin.

Awards