Leros is often used in language as a synonym for the psychiatric hospital that has been operating since 1958 on the island. This "Leros" exists in our collective memory more as an idea, as a cultural imagination, as a mythical space of dehumanization and deprivation, as a symbol of psychiatric abuse and confinement, rather than as an institution, as a framework of organized and legislatively framed state planning.

As a working environment, as a structure with active subjects, as a space for the development of social and economic relationships, this "Leros" emerges as a legacy and continuation of specific policies, practices, and ideologies, and as a cultural product of the society that gave birth to and nurtured it for many decades.

To a large extent, Leros exists in our collective memory as a "guilty secret," as the Observer journalist called it in the newspaper's headline on September 10, 1989. Beyond the psychiatric hospital, this guilty secret refers to a chronically traumatic history of confinement and exclusion that begins with the military facilities of the Italians during the interwar period.

It extends to the establishment of the Royal Technical Schools, which served as places of indoctrination for young rebels and working-class children in the post-civil war period, and the use of the same buildings as sites for the detention and exile of political dissenters during the Junta, culminating in the creation of a hot spot for refugees in the courtyard of the psychiatric hospital in 2016.

The current volume, bringing together scholars from different disciplines such as history, anthropology, critical theory, and musicology, attempts to speak "about" and "beyond" the "guilty secret," placing Leros from the margins to the center of research.