Dorothea Scharf-Loufakis studied German literature and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian
University in Munich, Germany, while working in parallel as an assistant
nurse and as a caregiver in an institution with mentally retarded persons.

Since 1992 she has lived in Thessaloniki, Greece, where she obtained the
degree in German philology from the Aristotle University and started
working as a German teacher and translator.

She is married and has a family with five children.

In 2014, during the economic crises in Greece, she had the opportunity to collaborate with the director Lydia Konsta, as a researcher and also as one of the protagonists in her documentary Light Thickens, 2016 (TV edition 2021). The documentary follows a group of artists, who are challenged to face the unresolved issues from the dark chapter of the German occupation of Greece during WW2, which still haunts the Greek-German relationships.
Since then, the subject of ‘trauma,’ with all its personal and collective
aspects, including therapeutic rehabilitation, remains her field of interest.
Her research has led her to further investigate
‘intergenerational transmission’ processes, international migration and
integration models, ‘cross-culture-kids’ and identity forming factors such
as ‘the need to belong’, ‘otherness’ and the notion of ‘homeland’.