Alexandra Pascalidou

Alexandra Pascalidou
Alexandra Pascalidou in 2011
Born	(1970-07-17) July 17, 1970 Bucharest, Romania
Occupation	columnist, television hostess and author

Alexandra Pascalidou (Greek: Αλεξάνδρα Πασχαλίδου; born July 17, 1970, Bucharest, Romania) 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 started hosting the multicultural TV-show Mosaik in SVT, one of Sweden’s Public Service-channels.

Between 2000-2001 she hosted "Som sagt" in SVT, a Saturday night-program that had its focus on literature and language questions. At the same time, she was the producer and reporter for the TV-show "Striptease" that focused on investigative journalism.

In 2004 Pascalidou hosted the Olympics in Athens for SVT and thereafter she lived in Greece for two years where she hosted various TV-shows. For example Friday night entertainment in ERT where she spent a whole day with Roberto Cavalli, Isabel Allende and Roger Moore among others. She was also hosting Greek morning television every day with three hours of live coverage each episode. She also was hostess for the Eurovision Song Contest in Greece in 2005, and 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 TV4's Förkväll^[1] a daytime lifestyle program.

She participated in the show Pokermiljonen in TV4 and has been hostess for a series of charity galas in SVT, for example "På flykt” with Kjell Lönnå and “Uppesittarkväll” with Anders Lundin.

Pascalidou is a columnist^[2] and freelance writer in newspapers such as GP and Expressen. She has blogged continually on Metrobloggen until the newspaper cancelled all cooperation with her and 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 (Children's right in society) 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 2.6 miljoner klubben and she is a mom's ambassador to RFSUs campaign. Alexandra sits on the board of the foundation Läxhjälpen which helps young people in troubled areas with their homework to help them get access to secondary education.

Pascalidou was in the mid-1990s along with Michael Alonzo, Dogge Doggelito and Cissi Elwin prominent figures in the Swedish part of Europarådets anti-racism campaign "All Different All Equal" as in Sweden also went under the working title "Youth Against Racism”(UMR).

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.^[3]

Plagiarism and ghost writing

Alexandra has been accused several times of plagiarism and using ghost writers. Two accounts of plagiarism have been exposed. In 2003, she copied large parts of text written by the journalist Daniel Hernandez for Los Angeles Times.^[4] In 2015, she was fired from the newspaper Metro after it was exposed that she had translated a Turkish poem by Aziz Nesin.^[5]

Bibliography

• My Big Fat Greek Cookbook (2010) Bonnier fakta ^[6][7]
• Taxi (2008). Interviews with taxi drivers around the world, from Nairobi to New York. Also available in Greek (Psychogios Publications) This book was sent on radio P1, P3 and P4, where Alexandra directed Sweden's leading actors including Michael Nyqvist, Samuel Fröler, David Dencik and Andreas Wilson.
• Front Kick (2003). Stories from Alexandra's journeys in the world of racism, terrorism, media, democracy and so on.
• Cross-Roads: voices from suburban cultures (2002). Deep interviews with famous Swedish artists who grew up in the suburbia. For example Joakim Thåström, Jerry Williams, Metallica, Dogge and others.
• Beyond my mom’s street (2001). An autobiographical book about growing up in one of Sweden's poorest neighborhoods. The book was hailed by critics and used in schools as tooting literature. The book was translated into Greek by publisher Oceanid.

In popular culture

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). Pascalidou appeared briefly in this film as a Swedish TV reporter covering the protagonist's trial.

References

External links

• Aftonbladet interview with Pascalidou
• Interview with Alexandra about Athens
• Alexandra talks about her new cookbook in TV4
• Board of the foundation Läxhjälpen