Alexandra Pascalidou (born 17 July 1970) is a Greek-Swedish journalist, television and radio presenter and author. She is also a frequent lecturer 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"(UMR) in the mid-1990s. In 2000–01 she hosted Som sagt on SVT, a Saturday night programme 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 programme every day. She was the hostess for the Eurovision Song Contest in Greece in 2005, and a commentator in Kyiv 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 (Children's Rights 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 2.6Miljoner Klubben and a mom's ambassador to RFSUs campaign. She sits on the board of the foundation. It was announced on January 21, 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 New Academy.

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 it was revealed that she had translated a Turkish poem by Aziz Nesin and published under her own name. In connection to the latter incident Pascalidou's collaboration with the newspaper Metro was terminated. The details behind the termination was not revealed by neither Metro nor Pascalidou, but the column in question was removed from Metro's archive.

Awards

In popular culture