Athena Stourna is scenographer, theatre & performance maker and researcher. She holds a BA (Hons) in Theatre Design from Rose Bruford College (UK), a Maîtrise and DEA in Theatre Studies from the Université de la Sorbonne-nouvelle Paris III, where she also completed a PhD summa cum laude.

Athena is the author of the monograph La Cuisine à la scène: boire et manger au théâtre du XXe siècle (Cuisine onstage: Food and drink in 20th-century theatre), published by the Presses universitaires de Rennes/Presses universitaires François-Rabelais in 2011. Her article 'The Domestic Kitchen as Performance Space: The Female Artist vs the Housewife', published in Critical Stages/Scènes critiques Journal, 2023 received the Best article Prize at the Janovics Center Awards 2023 for Outstanding Humanities Research in Transnational Film and Theatre Studies. Athena has been a Visiting Fellow at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid (2004) and at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University (2017). She is a grantee of the Friends of the Princeton University Library (2019) and an alumna of the Mellon School of Theatre and Performance Research at Harvard University (2016 & 2022).

As artistic director of the multinational Okypus Theatre Company, Athena has created productions that have been mounted in theatrical and non-theatrical spaces (museums, archaeological sites, and public spaces) in Greece, the Czech Republic, Wales and Argentina. She is also a member of the international group The Food Project, who work at the intersection of food and performance.