Sunoikisis operates under the auspices of Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS), located in Washington, DC. The goal of Sunoikisis is to provide enriched opportunities for students and faculty through pooling of resources.

With generous funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Sunoikisis began in 1995 as a program of the Associated Colleges of the South. Southwestern University was a founding member. Later, under NITLE (now headquartered at Southwestern University), the program became national. Beginning with the summer of 2009, the CHS began providing administrative, logistical, and financial support.

1999 marked the first season of Sunoikisis student and faculty participation in an excavation in southwestern Turkey. In the fall of 2000, Sunoikisis began offering inter-institutional literature courses, with some 25 students enrolled in “The Literature of the Early Empire.” Sunoikisis students also participate in an Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Sunoikisis courses this past fall were focused on Hellenistic Greek literature and the literature of the Flavian period. Homeric Literature and Medieval Latin Literature will be offered in 2012.

The CHS was founded in 1952 “exclusively for the establishment of an educational center in the field of Hellenic Studies designed to re-discover the humanism of the Hellenic Greeks.”