Academic Events
Organizing Committee Structure
The Athens Dialogues conference was organized by a committee composed of three sub-committees: International, Greek and Advisory. These three sub-committees complemented each other and took their decisions jointly. Their members were of equal status and they contributed correspondingly to the organization of the conference and especially to the linking of The Athens Dialogues with international research on Greek culture. The committee’s task was to formulate carefully the questions to be discussed, to propose the most suitable persons to take part in the discussions and to assume responsibility for the broad dissemination of the problems addressed and the aspirations of the conference. The composition of the committee ensured an integrated approach to the different subject categories. With their knowledge and experience, the members of the committee contributed to the successful organization of the conference and its involvement with the scholarly world.
The International Organizing Committee consisted of representatives of the collaborating institutions and of personalities of international standing in their respective fields.
The Advisory Committee consisted of distinguished personalities from the worlds of literature, the arts and science.
The Greek Committee consisted of scholars from Greek universities and research bodies.
President of the Athens Dialogues Organizing Committee
Professor George Babiniotis
Honorary and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the School of Philosophy and ex-Dean of the University of Athens
George Babiniotis is Honorary and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens. Since 2006 he has been President of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture. He has also been President, since 1987, of the Educational Trust Philekpaideftiki Etaireia (of the Arsakeia-Tossitseia Schools of Athens, Patras, Thessaloniki and Tirana, Albania). From 1973 to 2006 he was Professor of Linguistics at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens. For the last six years of his tenure, from 2000 to 2006, he was Rector of the University of Athens. He is a Regular Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (with its seat at Salzburg), a Regular Member of the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (CIPL), Chairman of the Linguistics Society of Athens, and a Regular Member of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. He is also a regular contributor of scholarly articles to the newspaper To Vima, and a scientific editor of programmes on State Television (‘Do you speak Greek?’ and ‘They gave me Greek as my language’). He is a former Chairman of the State Institute of Education of Greece, and a member of the editorial boards of the Encyclopedia Papyrus-Larousse-Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Ekdotiki of Athens (Linguistics). He is one of the pioneers of Contemporary (Modern) Linguistics in Greece. From the start he taught modern methods of language description, which he applied equally to the description of ancient and modern Greek. He has focused especially on how to teach the language as a mother tongue on the basis of a communicative method in conjunction with grammar and syntax (a structural-functional approach). He has also carried out systematic work in lexicography. He is editor of Glossologia, the Greek journal of linguistics, and the director of the series Language-Text-Communication. He holds honorary doctorates from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Montreal, Canada. He is a recipient of the Herder Prize, and has been decorated with the Order of Academic Palms of the French Republic, the Gold Cross of the Russian Republic, the Gold Cross of the Orthodox Church of Greece and the Great Cross del Merito Civil of Spain.
Publications: Among the many publications resulting from his linguistic work are the following (in Greek)
• A Dictionary of Modern Greek, Athens 1998 (3rd edn 2008)
• A Dictionary for School and Office, Athens 2004
• A Pocket Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, Athens 2006
• A Spelling Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, Athens 2008
• A Grammar of Modern Greek – A Structural-Functional Communicative Approach (in collaboration with Ch. Klairis), Athens 2005
• A Brief Grammar of Modern Greek – Structural-Functional-Communicative, Athens 2007
vita | interview
Academic Coordinator of the Athens Dialogues conference
Dr. Niki Tsironis
Senior Researcher, Institute for Byzantine Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation
Dr Niki Tsironis is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Byzantine Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. She has received her Ph.D. from King’s College London (supervised by Professor Dame Averil Cameron). She works on the literature of the middle Byzantine period and especially on the field of homiletics. She has published articles in collected studies volumes on the Mother of God in the Iconoclastic Controversy, the Lament of the Virgin, Cassia the Hymnographer, etc. She is also working on the history of book and its binding. She is the editor of the volume The Book in Byzantium. Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Bookbinding (2008) and the 3 volumes Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Greek Paleography (2008) in collaboration with Basile Atsalos. She has worked for the BBC worldservice and the National Greek television on cultural programmes. She has been the academic coordinator of the collaboration between the National Hellenic Research Foundation and the Onassis Foundation and she is also a member of the board of the Onassis Scholars Association. As academic coordinator she initiated European projects on ‘Arts, Crafts and Professions of the Past’ (2007) and on ‘Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Bookbinding’ (2005-2009). She has worked on the dissemination of academic research to the wider public, organized seminars in Oxford (for the Patristic and Byzantine Society), numerous international conferences in London and Athens and has also curated exhibitions on the history of book, the Russian Diaspora, etc. She is member of various societies and associations of Byzantine Studies and actively involved in the Cultural Events of the National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Professor Dame Averil Cameron
Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History, Warden of Keble College, Oxford University
Professor Dame Averil Cameron, DBE, FBA, is the Warden of Keble College, Oxford and Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History in the University of Oxford, where she is also a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. She previously taught at King’s College London and was the founding Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2009.
Her most recent book, The Byzantines (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), has been translated into Greek and is being published in March 2009 by Psichogios. She published an article in January, 2008 in Nea Hestia on ‘The absence of Byzantium’, which has attracted much attention, with responses from Greek and other scholars published in successive monthly issues of Nea Hestia until January, 2009. Other books by Averil Cameron include Procopius and the Sixth Century (1985), Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), The Later Roman Empire (1993) and The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity (1993), and she is co-editor of volumes XII-XIV of the Cambridge Ancient History (1997-2005). She was also co-director of the project on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, which has produced a long series of publications with the Darwin Press, Princeton, from 1992 onwards.
Professor Guglielmo Cavallo
Professor of Greek Palaeography, University “La Sapienza” Rome
Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
Guglielmo Cavallo is a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Professor of Palaeography at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. He was born in Carovigno, in the province of Brindisi, in 1938.
On graduating from the University of Bari in 1961, he was appointed assistant lecturer in palaeography and diplomatics at the same university. In 1969 he moved to Rome, where he was first assistant lecturer in Greek palaeography at the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari and then, from 1970 to 1974, professor of the history of manuscript tradition at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. In 1975 he was appointed to the chair of Latin Palaeography at the Scuola Speciale. Since 1978 he has been full professor of Greek Palaeography at ‘La Sapienza’. He has also been visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
He is a member of the following learned bodies: the Centro Italiano di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo (CISAM), the Istituto Superiore di Studi Umanistici, the Comité International de Paléographie Grecque, the Comité International de Paléographie Latine, the Comité International de Papyrologie, the Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e dei Diplomatisti, and the Parnassos Academy of Athens. He is the Director of the School for the Study of Written Records of the Centro E. Majorana in Erice, Sicily, and the President of the Unione Accademica Nazionale.
He has been organizer and member of the scientific committees of many international conferences (especially in Erice, where as Director of the School for the Study of Written Records he organized in 1988 the third International Congress of Greek Palaeography and in Spoleto as a member of CISAM) and has promoted many editing and research activities. He is a member of the academic board of the Dottorato in Paleografia Greca e Latina programme at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and also of the Dottorato in Scienze Umanistiche Antichità-Medioevo-Rinascimento programme at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Umanistici.
His bibliography consists of approximately 550 titles, such as:
Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica, Florence 1967.
Libri, scritture, scribe a Ercolano, Naples 1983.
Dalla parte del libro. Storie di trasmissione dei classici, Urbino 2002.
Il calamo e il papiro. La scrittura greca dall’ età ellenistica ai primi secoli di Bisancio, Florence 2006.
Chancelier Gabriel de Broglie
Chancelier of the Institut de France
Gabriel de Broglie was born in Versailles on 21 April 1931. Since 1 January 2006 he has been Chancellor of the Institut de France.
A graduate of the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and of the National School of Administration (ENA) (1958-1960), Gabriel de Broglie began his career as an attaché at the French Embassy in Italy (1955-1958). He then moved to the Conseil d’Etat, where he served successively as Auditor (1960-1967), Master of Requests (1967) and finally as Counsellor of State (from 1985). During this period he served on the staff of various ministries: legal advisor to the Minister of Culture, André Malraux (1962-1966); legal consellor to the General Secretariat of the Inter-ministerial Committee (SGCI) on matters of European economic co-operation (1964-1967); technical counsellor to the office of the Minister for Social Affairs, Jean-Marcel Jeanneney (1966-1968), to the office of the Minister of State for Social Affairs, Maurice Schumann (1968), to the office of the Prime Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville (1968-1969), and to the office of the Minister of Culture, Edmond Michelet (1970). He was also the director of the office of the interim Minister of Culture, André Bettencourt (1970-1971).
During this period, from 1964 to 1971, Gabriel de Broglie had teaching responsibilities. He lectured at the Institute of Political Sciences of Paris (1964-1971) and at the National School of Administration (1963-1966), and also gave courses at the School of Civil Aviation.
Gabriel de Broglie has been particularly prominent in the field of public broadcasting. He has served successively as Director, Secretary General to the Administration, and Assistant Director General of the Office of French Radio and Television (ORTF). During the same period he was President of the Supervisory Council of Videogrammes de France (1971-1974), Director General of Radio France (1975-1979), President of the International Radio and Television University (URTI) (1976-1987), President of the National Institute of Audio-visual Communications (INA) (1979-1981), and was subsequently appointed by the President of the Senate a member of the National Commission on Communication and Freedoms (CNCL). He was also elected President of CNCL and he directed it until 1989.
Finally, since 1981 Gabriel de Broglie has occupied a number of posts connected with the defense and promotion of the French language: Vice-president of the High Committee of the French Language (1981-1982), member of the Higher Council of the French Language (1984-1986), Administrator of the National Library of France (since 1995), and President of the General Commission on Terminology and Neologisms (since 1996).
Gabriel de Broglie is President of the Society of Diplomatic History and Honorary President of the Committee of the History of Television and of the Nouveau Cercle de l’Union. His publications as a historian include biographies and studies on Orleanism and the twentieth century. He has also published articles on his work in the Conseil d’Etat and in television, and on the French language. Since 1981 he has been concerned with the French language in various capacities as a member of the High Committee (1981-1982) and the Higher Council (1984, 1986 and since 1999) and as President of the General Commission on Terminology and Neologisms (1996-2006).
A passionate bibliophile, he has been President of the French Society of Bibliophiles since 1980 and in 2003 he was elected a member of London’s Roxburghe Club.
Commander of the Legion d’Honneur, Chevalier of the National Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, Commander of the Order of Academic Palms.
Publications:
Le Général de Valence ou l’Insouciance et la Gloire, Paris 1972. (Prix des écrivains combattants, prix du cercle de l’union and prix Broquette-Gonin de l’Academie française.)
Le Conseil d’Etat (collaborative volume edited by Louis Fougère), Paris 1974.
Ségur sans cérémonie ou la Gaité libertine, Paris 1977.
Histoire politique de la Revue des Deux-Mondes de 1829 à 1979, Paris 1979. (Couronné par l’Academie française.)
L’Orléanisme ou la Ressource libérale de la France, Paris 1981. (Couronné par l’Academie française.)
Une image vaut dix mille mots. Essai sur la télévision, Paris 1982.
Madame de Genlis, Paris 1985. (Grand prix Gobert de l’Academie française.)
Le français pour qu’il vive, Paris 1987. (Prix du rayonnement de la langue française de l’Academie française, prix Vauban.)
Guizot, Paris 1990. (Prix des Ambassadeurs.)
La Vraie Madame Gervaisais (Intoduction), Paris 1991.
Le XIXe siècle. L’éclat et le déclin de la France, Paris 1995.
MacMahon, Paris 2000.
Le droit d’auteur et Internet, Paris 2001.
Professor Athanassios Fokas
Chair in Nonlinear Mathematical Science at the University of Cambridge, UK
Member of the Academy of Athens
Athanassios Fokas is Professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretic Physics at the University of Cambridge.
He has a BSc in Aeronautics from Imperial College (1975), a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology (1979) and an MD from the University of Miami, School of Medicine (1986).
In 1986, at the age of 33, he was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Clarkson University, USA. In 1996 he was appointed to a Chair in Applied Mathematics at Imperial College, UK. In 2002 he was appointed to the newly inaugurated Chair in Nonlinear Mathematical Science at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the youngest member of the Academy of Athens and the first ever Applied mathematician to be elected a full member to the Academy. He is a Professorial Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge.
In 2000 he was awarded the Naylor Prize (the most prestigious prize in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in UK, earlier recipients include R. Penrose and S. Hawking). He has also been awarded the Aristeion Prize in Sciences of the Academy of Athens (this is the most prestigious prize of the Academy given every four years to a single scholar chosen from science, engineering, or medicine), as well as the Excellence prize of the Bodossaki Foundation (this premier scientific prize is awarded every two years to scientists of Greek origin, as chosen by an international committee chaired by Nobel Laureate W. Arber). He has received honourary degrees from five Universities and also has been decorated as the Commander of the Order of Phoenix by the President of the Hellenic Republic.
He is the co-author or co-editor of nine books, and the author or co-author of more than 200 papers. ISI Web of Science includes A.S. Fokas in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the field of Mathematics.
Professor Hans-Joachim Gehrke
Professor of Ancient History
President of the German Archaeological Institute
Hans-Joachim Gehrke is a Professor of Ancient History and President of the German Archaeological Institute. Born in 1945, he studied History, Classical Philology and Philosophy at the University of Göttingen, where he completed his doctorate in Ancient History in 1973.
After a period as an assistant lecturer at Göttingen (1974-82) he was appointed Full Professor of Ancient History at the University of Würzburg (1982-84). In 1984 he became Full Professor of Ancient History at the Free University of Berlin and in 1987 Full Professor of Ancient History at the University of Freiburg. Since 2008 he has been President of the German Archaeological Institute.
He has been a Member since 1994 of the Academy of Public Sciences of Erfurt, and since 1996 of the German Archaeological Institute (sitting from 2001 on its governing board). Since 1997 he has been a Member of the Scientific Committee of the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Chairman since 2002 and from 2006 a Member of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees). Since 1997 he has also been a Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.
From 1999 to 2005 he was a Member of the Senate and Board of Trustees of the German Research Society. Since 2000 he has been a Member of the Advisory Council of the Romano Guardini Foundation. From 2001-2004 he was a Member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation (as well as of the Foundation’s Core Group). Since 2002 he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of FEST (Forschungsstelle der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft e. V.)
He is on the editorial boards of the journals Klio, Gnomon and Hypomnemata. From 1990 to 1996 he gave the Graduate Course of Lectures ‘Vergangenheitsbezug antiker Gegenwarten’, and also from 1997 to 2000 the Course ‘Identitäten und Alteritäten. Die Funktion von Alterität für die Konstitution und Konstruktion von Identität’ on notions of the past and identity. From 2003 to 2007 he chaired the scientific advisory committee of the Förderinitiative Geistes und Sozialwissenschaften der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, for the promotion of research in the theoretical and social sciences. From 2005 to 2008 he gave a doctoral course of lectures entitled ‘Geschichte und Erzählen’, History and Narratives.
Select publications:
Geschichte des Hellenismus, Munich 1990 (2nd edn 1995; Greek trans. Athens 2000).
Alexander der Grosse, Munich 1996 (2nd edn 2005; Spanish trans. Madrid 2001).
Kleine Geschichte der Antike, Munich 1999 (Italian trans., Turin 2002).
Geschichte der Antike. Ein Studienbuch, Stuttgart-Weimar 2000 (2nd edn 2006).
‘Myth History and Collective Identity: Uses of the Past in Ancient Greece and Beyond’, in Nino Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, Oxford, 2001.
‘Bürgerliches Selbstverständnis und Polisidentität im Hellenismus’, in K-J. Hölkeskamp et al. (eds), Sinn (in) der Antike. Orienterungssysteme, Leitbilder und Wertkonzepte im Allertum, Mainz 2003, 225-54.
‘Identität in der Alteritåt: Heroen als Grenzgänger zwischen Hellenen und Barbaren’, in E. S. Gruen (Ed.), Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity, Stuttgart 2005, 50-67.
Stasis. Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Munich 1985.
Jenseits von Athen und Sparta. Das Dritte Griechenland und seine Staatenwelt, Munich 1986.
Professor Hélène Glykatzi-Ahrweiler
Rector and President of the University of Europe
Director of the Research Centre for Byzantine and Christian Near East History and Civilization
Hélène Glykatzi-Ahrweiler is Rector, President of the University of Europe, and Director of the Research Centre for Byzantine and Christian Near East History and Civilization.
She was born in Athens in 1926, and is married with one child.
She studied at the Department of History and Archaeology of the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens, and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. She completed a doctoral thesis in History and Literature at the Sorbonne. Her research focuses on Byzantine History and Literature.
In 1955 she became a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Head of Research at the same institution, a professor at the Sorbonne, Director of the Department of History and President of the Research Committee of the School of Philosophy and Human Sciences of the Sorbonne, Vice-President of the University of Paris I (Panthéon – Sorbonne), visiting professor at Harvard University (USA), President of the University of Paris I (from 1981 Honorary President), Vice-President of the Conference of University Presidents, Honorary President of the International Union of Byzantine Studies, Rector of the Academy, Chancellor of the Universities of Paris and Vice-President of the Supreme Council of the National Department of Education, Secretary general of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, President of the ‘Georges Pompidou’ National Centre of Arts and Culture.
Currently she is Director of the Research Centre for Byzantine and Christian Near East History and Civilization, President of the University of Europe, President of the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, President of the National Theatre of Greece, Vice-President of the Universal Movement for Scientific Responsibility (MURS), President of the American Museum of Art (France), of the Committee for Ethical and Scientific Research of France, Vice-President of the Danielle Mitterand Foundation, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (London), Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, of the Academy of Berlin, and of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
She holds Honorary Doctorates of the Universities of London, Belgrade, New York, New Brunswick (Canada), Lima, American University of Paris, the School of Advanced Studies in Social and Political Sciences of Athens, Harvard, and Haifa and an Honorary Doctorate of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
She has been appointed Commander of the Hellenic Legion of Honour (Greece), Gold Cross of the Legion d’Honneur (France), Gold Cross of the National Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, Gold Cross of the Order of Academic Palms (France), Gold Citizen’s Medal (France), Commander of the Order of the Falcon (Iceland), Commander of the National Order of the Oak Crown (Luxembourg), Grand Commander of the Order of Merit (Austria), Commander of the Royal Order of Dannebrog (Denmark), Commander of the Order of Sciences, Letters and Arts (Portugal), Commander of the Order of Merit (Italy), Honorary Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Member of the Order of the International Olympic Committee.
Select Publications:
Byzance et la mer, Paris 1966
Études sur les structures administratives et sociales de Byzance, London 1971
L’idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantine, Paris 1975
Byzantium: Its Countries and Terrains, London 1975
L’histoire et le géographie de la région de Smyrne entre les deux occupations turques 1081-1317, particulièrement au XIIIe siècles, Paris 1965
Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire (ed. with Angeliki E. Laiou), Washington, D.C. 1998
Les Européens, Paris 2000
The Making of Europe, Athens 2000
Professor Johannes Koder
Professor and Director of the Institute for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, University of Vienna
Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Johannes Koder is Director of the Institute for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies at the University of Vienna, President of the Austrian Society for Byzantine Studies and Vice-president of the Association Internationale des Études Byzantines. Born in Vienna in 1942, Johannes Koder pursued Byzantine, Arab and Classical Studies at the University of Vienna (1960-1965). He was awarded his Dr.phil. (under Herbert Hunger) in 1965. His postdoctoral studies were carried out in Athens (Austrian Archaeological Institute, 1967) and Munich (Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, 1970/71 and 1974).
In 1973 he was appointed an associate professor at the University of Vienna. In 1978 he became a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz in Germany. He has been Professor and Director of the Institute for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies at the University of Vienna since 1985. He also holds several visiting professorships.
From 1993 to 1997 and from 1993 to 2003 he was President (1997-1999 Vice-president) of the Austrian Federal Board of Professors of Universities.
He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was Director of the research units ‘Tabula Imperii Byzantini’ (until 2005) and ‘Balkan-Kommission’ of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (until 2007).
He has been a member of the advisory board of the Institut für Byzanzforschung since 2006, Interim Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute since 2007, and Interim Director of the Austrian excavations in Ephesos (Turkey) since 2008.
Johannes Koder holds an honorary doctorate from the Kapodistrian University of Athens (2005). He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens (2006), an honorary fellow of the Archaeological Society in Athens, and a corresponding fellow of the Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici (Palermo). He was a Senior Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, from 2002 to 2008.
He is a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix of the Hellenic Republic and holds the Austrian Grosses Goldenes Ehrenzeichen für Verdienst um die Republik Oesterreich.
He is the author of thirteen monographs, including:
Der Lebensraum der Byzantiner. Historisch-geographischer Abriss ihres mittelalterlichen Staates im oestlichen Mittelmeerraum, 2nd ed., Vienna 2001.
Byzantium as a Land. Introduction to the Historical Geography of the Eastern Mediterranean in the Byzantine Period (in Greek), Thessaloniki 2004.
His 240 articles include:
‘The European Mediterranean and Eurasia. Two dimensions of universal ideological thinking in Roman, Byzantine and Modern Political Ideology’ (in Greek), in Proceedings of the Academy of Athens 82 (2007) 274-296.
‘Symeon the New Theologian and his hymns’ (in Greek) in A. Markopoulos (ed.), Four Texts on the Poetry of Symeon the New Theologian, Athens 2008, 1-35.
Professor Richard Martin
Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics, Stanford University
Richard Martin is the Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics at Stanford University. He studied Classics and Celtic Languages at Harvard University and Classical Philology at Harvard, where he obtained his PhD. His research interests lie in Greek poetry, especially Homer, Greek drama, Modern Greek literature and culture, Medieval and Modern Irish literature and oral tradition.
After four years as a general assignment reporter at The Boston Globe (1974-1978), Richard Martin was appointed a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Classics of Harvard University. In 1981 he became Assistant and then Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University. He was then a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to Princeton as Professor of Classics in 2000.
He won Harvard’s Bowdoin Prize for Greek prose composition in 1979. From 1985 to 1987 he was the Class of 1936 Bicentennial Preceptor in Princeton. From 1996 to 2000 he was the Behrman Senior Fellow of the Humanities Council, also in Princeton. In 1999 he was honoured with the Bellagio residential fellowship of the Rockefeller Foundation.
His recent publications include:
‘Outer Limits, Choral Space’, in C. Kraus, S. Goldhill, H. Foley and J. Elsner (eds), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature, Oxford 2007, 35-62.
‘Classics and Anthropology Today’, in N. Panourgia and G. Marcus (eds), Ethnographia Moralia: Experiments in Interpretive Anthropology, New York 2008.
‘Gift’, ‘Wisdom Traditions’, in Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome, Oxford forthcoming.
‘Stesichorus and the Voice of Jocasta’, in Proceedings of Delphi International Conference on European Drama, forthcoming.
‘Read on Arrival’, in R. Hunter and I. Rutherford (eds), Poeti Vaganti: Wandering Poets in Ancient Greece, Cambridge forthcoming.
‘Gnomes in Poems’, in Festschrift for John Papademetriou, Athens forthcoming.
‘Words Alone are Certain Good(s)’, TAPA 2008.
‘Golden Verses’, in F. Graf and S. Johnston (eds), Orphic Gold Tablets, forthcoming.
Professor Gregory Nagy
Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC
Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Gregory Nagy (Ph.D. 1966, Harvard University) is the Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC while continuing to teach half-time at the Harvard campus in Cambridge as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature.
Gregory Nagy is the author of The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979; 2nd ed. 1999), which was awarded the Goodwin Prize by the American Philological Association in 1982. He is also the author of over a dozen other books, including Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens (Harvard University Press 2002). He co-edited with Stephen A. Mitchell the second 40th anniversary edition of Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature vol. 24; Harvard University Press, 2000), co-authoring with Mitchell the new Introduction, pp. vii-nagyix. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977 and served as elected President of the American Philological Association in 1991. He was the Sather Classical Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley in spring 2002. From 1994 to 2000, he was Chair of Harvard’s Classics Department. Since 2000, he has been the Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, while continuing to teach at the Harvard campus in Cambridge as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature.
vita | interview
Professor Dimitri Nanopoulos
Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics, at Texas A&M University
Head of the Astroparticle Physics Group in Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), in Houston, Texas
Member of the Academy of Athens
He was born in Athens on September the 13th, 1948. He studied Physics at the University of Athens and he graduated in 1971. He continued his studies at the University of Sussex in England, where he received his Ph.D. in 1973, in High Energy Physics. He has been a Research Fellow at the Center of European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland and for many years he has been a staff member. He has also been a Research Fellow in École Normale Superieure, in Paris, France and in Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. In 1989, he was elected professor at the Department of Physics, at Texas A&M University and in 1992 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Physics. Since 2002 he holds the Mitchell/Heep Chair in High Energy Physics endowed with an amount of $1,5 Million. He is also Head of the Astroparticle Physics Group in Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), in Houston, Texas, USA, where he is in charge of a research department of the World Laboratory, which is based in Switzerland. In 1997 he was appointed regular member of the Academy of Athens. In 2005 he was appointed representative of Greece to the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). He was also President of the Greek National Council for Research and Technology from 2005 to 2009 and the National representative of Greece to the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2005 to 2006.
He has made several contributions to particle physics and cosmology. He works in string unified theories, fundamentals of quantum theory, astroparticle physics and quantum-inspired models of brain function.
He has written over 590 original papers, all published in peer-reviewed journals, with high impact factor, including 13 books. He has over 35.500 citations, placing him as the fourth (4th) most cited High Energy Physicist of all time according to the 2001 and 2004 census. Since 1988 he is Fellow of the American Physical Society and since 1992 a member of the Italian Physical Society. In 1996, he was awarded the Commander of the Order of Honour of the Greek State and in 2005, (100th anniversary of the Einstein’s Relativity Theory), he received for the second time (first time was in 1999) the the first place award from the Gravity Research Foundation (Massachusetts, U.S.A.). In 2006 he received the Onassis International Prize. In 2009, he was awarded with the “Enrico Fermi” Prize of the Italian Physical Society (SIF) in recognition of his discoveries of fundamental phenomenological properties of grand unifications and superstring theories.
Professor Evangelos Chrysos
Professor Emeritus of Byzantine History, University of Athens
General Secretary of the Greek Parliament Foundation
Evangelos Chrysos is General Secretary of the Greek Parliament Foundation, Professor Emeritus of Byzantine History at the University of Athens, Honorary Director of the Institute of Byzantine Research of the National Research Foundation and Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Born in 1938, he began his studies at Thessaloniki and holds doctorates from the Universities of Bonn (1963) and Thessaloniki (1969). His research has focused on Byzantine diplomatic history and international relations, the history of Byzantine administrative organization and political ideas, and also the history of the institution of the synod as a form of the operation of collective agents during the Middle Ages.
He was Lecturer, Associate Professor and Full Professor in the University of Ioannina in 1974, 1977 and 1981-96, respectively. He was a Professor of the University of Cyprus from 1996 to 2000 and of the University of Athens from 2000 to 2005. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Balamand (1971, 1972, 2004), Vienna (1985), Bamberg (1986), Munich (1987), Boston (1991-2) and Paris-EHESS (2000), and a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundations of Germany and of the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies at Washington DC.
He is currently serving as the elected General Secretary of the International Committee for Byzantine Studies.
He has directed large international research programmes funded by the European Union and the European Science Foundation. He has organized many international scholarly conferences in Greece and abroad. He is a member of the editorial committee of five international journals of Byzantine studies.
Among other distinctions he has been appointed Archon Notary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a Knight of the Order of St Gregory the Great of Rome.
He has written a large number of books and articles on Byzantine themes.
Professor Angelos Delivorrias
Director of the Benaki Museum and Professor Emeritus of History of Art, University of Athens
Angelos Delivorrias is Director of the Benaki Museum and Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Athens. Born in 1937, he studied archaeology at the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki and took part in many Greek excavations. He pursued his postgraduate studies at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau (1964-5), completing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Tübingen (1969-72). He continued his studies at the Sorbonne and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Since 1973 he has been Director of the Benaki Museum and in 1992 was elected Professor of the History of Art at the University of Athens. He has been invited officially to study various collections of Greek antiquities and has given numerous lectures abroad (Paris, London, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Oslo, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Princeton, Getty Museum, etc.).
He has been honoured for his work, being appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, and Commander of the Order of the Palm, by the President of the Hellenic Republic. He has been awarded the Silver Medal of the Academy of Athens and the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana. In 2008 he was honoured with the distinction ‘Xenia 2008′. His books and articles have been issued in many editions both in Greece and abroad.
Professor Marina Lambraki – Plaka
Professor Emeritus of History of Art, Athens School of Fine Arts
Director of the National Gallery of Greece
Marina Lambraki-Plaka is Professor Emerita of History of Art and Director of the National Gallery Alexandros Soutzos Museum.
She was born in Arkalochori of Herakleion, Crete. She studied in the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Athens and began her postgraduate studies in Classical Archaeology with a scholarship from the Foundation of State Scholarships. She continued her postgraduate studies in the History and Sociology of Art in Paris at the Sorbonne (Paris I), again with a scholarship from the Foundation of State Scholarships. In 1971 she was awarded a doctorate by the Sorbonne with a dissertation entitled ‘Bourdelle and Greece’.
A Professor of History of Art at the Doxiadis School and at the Moraitis School, she became Assistant to Professor Pantelis Prevelakis in the Art History department at the Athens School of Fine Arts. In 1975 she was unanimously elected Full Professor of History of Art at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASKT) and thus became the first female professor in the history of the ASKT since its foundation in 1837. She has also been Visiting Professor at the Philosophical School of the University of Crete, at Princeton University (Department of Art and Archaeology) and at New York University (Institute of Fine Art) with a Fulbright scholarship. She has taught at many universities in the U.S.A. and at the Sorbonne (Paris IV). She has served as Vice-President of the International Union of Art Critics (AICA) and is a member of the French Society of History of Art.
In 1992 she was invited by the Minister Mrs Anna Psarouda-Benaki to become Director of the National Gallery Alexandros Soutzos Museum.
Honorary awards: She has received many honorary awards and distinctions, amongst which are the Nikos Kazantzakis prize for her lifetime intellectual contribution, and the first Meletis-Dokimiou State Prize for her book On Painting – Alberti and Leonardo. She has been awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour by the President of the Hellenic Republic. In 1997 she was elected European Woman of the Year for Greece.
Publications:
Bourdelle et la Grèce. Les sources antiques de l’oeuvre de Bourdelle, Lille 1974 (2nd edn Athens 1985; Greek trans. Athens 2004).
Spyros Papoulakas, Athens 1975 (in Greek).
Makroyianni’s Thought, Athens 1976 (in Greek; 2nd edn 1996).
Introduction to the Art of the Italian Renaissance, Athens 1978 (in Greek).
Translation of Herbert Read’s History of Modern Sculpture, Athens 1979.
Rodin and Ancient Greek Art, Athens 1985 (in Greek).
Bauhaus, From Idealism to Functionalism, Athens 1986 (in Greek).
Treatises on Painting: Alberti and Leonardo, Herakleion 1988 (in Greek).
The Jester and his Truth: the Unseen Side of Art, Athens 1991 (in Greek).
The Painter Panayiotis Tetsis, Athens 1991 (in Greek).
Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, introduction, translation, commentary and notes, Athens 1994.
Tribute to Greco, Athens 1995 (in Greek).
A Hundred Years of the National Gallery, Athens 2000 (in Greek).
El Greco, the Greek, Athens 2000 (in Greek).
Introduction to Modern Art, Athens 2000 (in Greek).
Italian Renaissance: Art and Society, Art and Antiquity, Athens 2004 (in Greek).
Guide to the National Gallery, 19th century, book and DVD (in Greek).
Guide to the National Gallery, 20th century, book and DVD (in Greek).
She has also published more than two hundred studies and articles in newspapers and learned journals and has written more than a hundred introductions to exhibition catalogues.
Professor Vassilis Lambrinoudakis
Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology, University of Athens
Vassilis Lambrinoudakis is Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology in the University of Athens and a member of the Board of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture.
From 1981 to 2005 Vassilis Lambrinoudakis was a member of the Central Archaeological Council of Greece. From 1995 to 2006 he was President of the International Foundation LIMC and co-editor of the Lexikon Iconographicum Mythologiae and the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (five volumes). From 1998 to 2007 he was President of the Finance Management Fund for Archaeological Projects of the Greek Ministry of Culture. He was appointed to the Board of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture in 2006.
Vassilis Lambrinoudakis has been Director of Excavations in Epidauros, Naxos, Chios, Marathon and Arkanania, and has also directed large projects of enhancement of archaeological sites in Naxos, Epidauros and Athens. He is the editor of the review Archaeognosia and of books on archaeology and archaeological management.
He is a corresponding member of the French Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Academia Europea, of the Archaeological Society in Athens, of the German Archaeological Institute, and of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.
He has been awarded the First Prize of Europa Nostra for the excavation and enhancement of the sites of Yria and Sangri (2003). He has also been honoured by the President of the Hellenic Republic for the promotion of Greek archaeology and history throughout the world.
He is the author of eleven books, handbooks and monographs, as well as of 140 papers on ancient Greek architecture and art, ancient Greek religion, epigraphy, ancient topography and the management of monuments.
vita | interview
Professor Anastasios-Ioannis Metaxas
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Athens
Anastasios-Ioannis Metaxas is Professor Emeritus of Political Science of the University of Athens and Director of the Political Communication Workshop of the same institution. Having studied law and political sciences, he gained doctorates in political sciences (1970 with distinction) and in political science (Doctorat d’État, mention: ‘très bien et eloges’). His interests have focused on the political evolution of modern Greece.
He has taught at the Universities of Aix-en-Provence II, Aix-Marseille III, Venice, and Budapest, and at the Institute of Political Sciences (France). In 1982 he helped to found a separate department of Political Science at the University of Athens and was elected the first Chairman of the new department in 1982 (he was re-elected in 1984). He is a representative of the Council of Europe at the Permanent Conferences at Siena and Paris, and Director of the ‘European Lexicon of Political Communication’ and the series ‘Library of Political Communication’ published by Antony N. Sakkoulas. He has twice been Chairman of the Board of ERT, the Greek Society of Political Science and Vice-Chairman of UNESCO’s Information Commission.
He has been a regular columnist in the Vima newspaper (1977-88), and has also contributed to Kathimerini (1996-8). Since 2000 he has been responsible for the column ‘On the matter of’ in the newspaper O Kosmos tou Ependyti.
For his work on ’systems analysis’ he has been honoured with the Law School Prize of Aix-en-Provence and the Gold Medal of the City of Provence.
His more recent publications (all of which have been published in Greek) include:
From the ‘Painting of History’. The Representation and Extension of a Pre-parliamentary Moment, Athens 1999.
Preliminaries to Political Debate. Fourteen Studies on Style (3rd edn.), Athens 2002.
The Fraudulent Appropriation of Forms. From Political Discourse on Classicism, Athens 2003.
They Have Met in Essence. A Critique of Culture in Lay Terms, Athens 2003.
Realism and Romanticism in the Political Discourse of Andreas Laskaratos, Athens 2003.
The Ionian Polity, 1803. Stylistic Gems and Assumed Axioms in the Preface of the Constitution of the First Greek State (2nd edn.), Athens 2005.
Art and Authority. ‘Das Unbehagen in der Kultur’?, Athens 2005.
The Rhetoric of Ruins, Athens 2005.
Professor Ioannis-Theophanis Papadimitriou
Professor Emeritus of Classical Literature, University of Athens
Ioannis-Theophanis Papadimitriou is Professor Emeritus of Classical Literature at the University of Athens. He was born on 6 December 1931 and is married with one child.
He graduated in Philology from the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens in 1954. He pursued postgraduate studies at Harvard University and the University of Illinois/Urbana, where he gained a Ph.D. in 1960, and subsequently carried out post-doctoral work as a research fellow at the Freie Universität of Berlin and the Istituto Ellenico of Venice. During his studies at Athens he became very active in student affairs and politics. He served, for example as President and Officer in Charge of International Relations of the Administrative Committee of Societies of the University of Athens (DESPA), President of the then newly erected National Student Union of Greece (EPHEE), President of the Student Committee for the Cyprus Struggle (PEKA), and co-founder together with Gerasimos Arsenis and others of the European Youth Campaign in Greece. He played a leading roll in the first student exchanges between Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, an event which marked Marshal Tito’s first public opening towards the Western Alliance and his move away from the Soviet bloc. The culminating event of this three-nation initiative was the Balkan Festival at Ankara (28 February to 4 March 1954), in which he participated as the leader of the eighty-member Greek delegation.
In 1976 he was elected Full Professor to the Fifth Chair of Ancient Greek Literature at the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, where he taught until 1999. Since autumn 1999 he has been Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens. Earlier he had taught Classics and occasionally comparative Philology (1960-1973) at various universities in the U.S.A. From 1973 to 1976 he taught Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has also taught at the University of Crete (1979-1981), where he was Dean of the faculty (1979-1980) and Chairman of the Department of Philology (1979-1981), and he has been Visiting Professor at the University of Cyprus (2001, 2002).
During the period 1995-2007 he was Director of the programme of postgraduate studies for European teachers of Greek Literature at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi from its inception in 1995 to its close in 2006. From 2000 to 2004 he was Chairman of the Executive Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Delphi Centre. From time to time he has been a member of the Supervisory Committee of the General Archives of the Greek State and of the Central Archaeological Council (KAS). Since 2000 he has been President and co-founder of the Pan-European Network ‘Amphiktyonia’, which organizes the annual pan-European ‘Pythian’ Games and awards a prize to the best student of Ancient Greek from each participating European country. He is a founder member of the Judging Panel of the ‘Xanthopoulos – Pnevmatikos’ Prize, which is awarded annually by the President of the Hellenic Republic to a university member for outstanding teaching. He also serves on the Council of the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation.
In the past he has been Head of the Department of Classical Philology of the University of Athens (1982-1986, 1997-1999) and Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Princeton, Harvard, UCLA and Cincinnati. He is President of the Hellenic Society for Humanistic Studies, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the scholarly journal Archaiognosia and Honorary Member of the British Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.
He organized the First International and Panhellenic Conference on Ancient Greek Literature, which met at Athens in 1994, and edited its proceedings (Acta. First Panhellenic and International Conference on Ancient Greek Literature, Athens 1997).
He has often been invited to give lectures at various foreign and Greek universities: Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Duke, MIT, UCLA, University of Virginia, Cincinnati, Louvain, Salzburg, Ioannina, Crete, Ionian, etc.
He was honoured in 2001 with the First Prize of the Dutch Society of Classical Scholars. He has been elected a Fellow of the Fulbright-Smith-Mundt, Guggenheim and ACLS Senior Foundations.
His publications include:
‘Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of Stephanites kai Ichnelates‘ (Ph.D. dissertation 1960).
The Best Polity: Political Thought in Ancient Greece, vol.i, Prose Works (in Greek), Athens 1980 (revised edn 1989).
Elegy and Iambus (in Greek), Athens 1984 (frequently reprinted).
Aesopia and Aesopica (in Greek) Athens, 2nd edn, 1989.
Aesop as an Archetypal Hero, Athens 1997.
He has also (in collaboration with E. Makrigianni) translated Charles Segal’s book, Oedipus Tyrannus. Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge, Athens 2001.
He has published works chiefly on Ancient Greek subjects, but also on Byzantine and Modern Greek literature and tradition, in international and Greek learned journals. Forthcoming, inter alia, are a critical edition with explanatory notes of Aesop’s Fables and annotated texts of Greece’s ancient elegiac and iambic poetry.
vita | interview
Professor Emmanuel Roucounas
Honorary Professor of International Law, University of Athens;
Member of the Academy of Athens
Emmanuel Roucounas is an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Athens and a Judge Ad Hoc at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. He was elected Professor of International Law at the University of Athens in 1970, and has been Honorary Professor since 2008. A Member of the Academy of Athens since 1997, he became President in 2005. He has also been a Member of the Institute of International Law since 1993 and he became First Vice President in 2007. He has been a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration since 2001 and in 2008 became a Judge Ad Hoc at the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
He has been a Member of the United Nations International Law Commission (1985-1991), and a Member of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1983-85). In 2005 he was elected by the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe to join the small ‘Group of Wise Persons’ with a mandate to make proposals for the future of the European Court of Human Rights.
He was appointed ‘Independent Jurist’ in Africa by the Secretary-General of the United Nations (1993-99). He was legal counsel to the Greek government in the Continental Shelf of the Aegean Sea Case before the International Court of Justice (1976-78).
He has been a Member of the Group of Experts of the European Union for Central America (1992-99), of the Group of Experts of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe for the Balkans (1991-92), and of the Unesco International Bioethics Committee (1994-2003).
In the Council of Europe he has been a Member of the Steering Committee on Human Rights (CDDH) (1979-2005) and has sat on various expert committees and been the CDDH’s observer in the Steering Committee on Bioethics (1993-2005). He was Rapporteur of the Council of Europe’s Seminar on Human Rights and Terrorism (2005).
He has been a Member of the Supreme Court of article 100 of the Constitution of Greece (1992-95) and of the Court of the Judiciary (1992-93). He has also been a Member of the Greek delegation in the General Assembly of the United Nations (1980-99) and has participated in a number of diplomatic conferences, in particular the Diplomatic Conference on Humanitarian Law (1974-77), the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes) and the World Conferences against Racism and Racial Discrimination.
He has given lectures and conferences at the Universities of Athens, Thessaloniki, and Paris I, X and XIII, at University College London, at the Universities of Aix-en-Provence, Bordeaux and Rouen, at the Universities of San Sebastian and Castellon, at the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales (Paris), and at The Hague Academy of International Law (1987, 1997). In 2008 he lectured at the Universities of Baltimore, Berkeley and Virginia, at the City University of New York, at Yale, and at the University of Naples, Italy.
He has published nine books and over 100 articles on General International Law, the Law of Treaties, the Law of the Sea, Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, Bioethics, Diplomatic History and European Unification.
Professor Konstantinos Svolopoulos
Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek History, University of Athens
Member of the Academy of Athens
Konstantinos Svolopoulos is Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Hellenism in the Department of History and Archaeology of the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens and Founder and Director of the Konstantinos G. Karamanlis Foundation.
He has studied at the Universities of Athens (graduating with distinction in History and Archaeology), Strasbourg and Paris (graduating with a diploma in advanced studies in Political Sciences and International Relations). He received a doctorate from the University of Athens in 1974.
He was appointed Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Thessaloniki in 1978, and then tenured Lecturer in, and subsequently Professor of, the History of International Relations in the Law Department of the University of Thessaloniki. He was also Honorary Director of the Foundation for Studies of the Aimos Peninsula (IMXA) from 1981 to 1990. He is Vice-president of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture (from 2007), and a full member (since 2003) and Publications Secretary (since 1 January 2008) of the Academy of Athens. He has been elected Vice President of the Academy for 2009 and President for 2010.
He has published around 200 monographs and articles in learned journals and in collective publications dealing with modern and contemporary Greek history.
Professor François Terré
Professor Emeritus of the Sociology of Law in Law School, Paris II University
President of the French Academy of Ethics and Political Sciences
Education and field of research: Born in Paris on 23 July 1930, he studied at the School of Law and the Department of Classical Studies of the University of Paris, graduating in both subjects at the early age of twenty. Having decided on a legal career, he gained a doctorate in law with a thesis entitled ‘The influence of the individual’s will on the acquisition of a basic formation’. This work was awarded a prize by the University’s Department of Law. On publication by Éditions LGDJ, it also received the Dupin Aîné prize.
Two years later François Terré passed his professional examinations and embarked on an academic career. He practiced as a lawyer at the Cour d’appel de Paris (1953-1957) while he was lecturing in the Department of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Strasbourg (1955-1957).
In 1969, after serving as a professor in the Law Schools of Phnom-Penh, Strasbourg, Lille and Nanterre, he joined the academic staff of the Université de Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), where he was to remain. At this university he taught chiefly Commercial Law and the Sociology of Law, and was a member of the examining board of Civil Law (1969, 1973). For twenty years he was also President of the French Society of Philosophy and Law, and Director of the Archives of the Philosophy of Law (1983-2003).
He has been technical adviser to the Office of Jean Foyer (Cabinet), Minister of International Co-operation and afterwards General de Gaulle’s Minister of Justice (1960-1967). He was also a member of the Reform Commission of the Civil Code (1965-1975) and General Secretary of the Henri Capitant Society (1969-1973). In 1995 he became a member of the Academy of Ethics and Political Sciences, succeeding Mme Suzanne Bastid. He has also been a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens since 1993 and of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon since 1998. Since 2004 he has been an associate member of the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome).
He has been scientific adviser to the Editions du Juris-Classeur since 1967. During this period he has also been a series editor for the publishers Dalloz-Sirey, and for the Presses Universitaires de France. He has been a regular contributor on legal affairs to the newspaper Le Figaro.
Publications also include:
Introduction générale au droit, Paris 1991 (reprinted six times).
L’enfant de l’esclave. Génétique et droit, Paris 1987.
Le droit (Flammarion, coll. Dominos), Paris 1999.
Le juriste et le politique – Trente ans de journalisme au Figaro, Paris 2003.
Le dialogue des siècles, Paris 2004.
vita | interview
Mr. Christos Bokoros
Artist
Christos Bokoros is a painter. He was born in 1956 and grew up in Agrinio in Western Greece. He now lives and works in Kastella, near Athens. He studied law at the Democritus University of Thrace (1975-9) and painting at the National School of Fine Arts in Athens (1983-9). From his first solo exhibition in 1987 he has developed an international reputation as a painter and scenographer. He has often represented Greece in other countries on international bodies. He has exhibited in a large number of galleries from Brussels to Beijing. His works are found in public and private collections both in Greece and abroad.
vita | interview
Professor Dimitris Dimiroulis
Professor of the Department of Media Studies and Culture, Panteion University
Dimitris Dimiroulis is Professor of the Department of Media Studies and Culture at the Panteion University. He studied at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens and completed his doctoral dissertation at the School of Philosophy of the University of Thessaloniki. His interests focus on theoretical and historical aspects of literature, criticism, the Greek language and Greek poetry, on which he has published a large number of articles and studies. From 1980 to 1992 he lived abroad, in England and Australia, where he engaged in university teaching. In 1992 he returned to Greece on being elected Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of the Panteion University. From 1994 to 1998 he served as Vice-Chairman and from 1998 to 2002 as Chairman of the Department. In the current academic year he is Director of the Communications Sector and of the Media Workshop.
Among other titles he has published the following books (all in Greek)
Theory’s Ghost, Athens 1994
Emmanuel Roidis – Short Stories, Athens 1995
The Poet as Nation, Athens 1997
The Terrible Roar of the Surf A Critique of Seferis’ Three Secret Poems, Athens 1999
Parallax – Various Texts on Literature and Language, Athens 2002
The ‘Dionysios Solomos Dossier’ – The Anatomy of a National Thriller, Athens 200
Emmanuel Roidis – The Art of Style and Polemics, Athens 2005
Emmanuel Roidis – Pope Joan, with introduction and commentary, Athens 2005
Dionysios Solomos – Complete Works, with introduction, commentary and notes, Athens 2007
A. Calvos – Odes, with introduction, commentary and notes, Athens 2009.
vita | interview
Professor Panayiotis Doukellis
Associate Professor of Roman History in the Department of Social Anthropology and History of the University of the Aegean (Mytilene)
Panayiotis Doukellis was born in Mytilene in 1959. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the School of Philosophy of the University of Thessaloniki and his postgraduate studies in France at the University of Besançon, becoming a Docteur d’État en Histoire Ancienne in 1987. His main field of research is Greek and Roman antiquity, along with the encounter between these two modes of life and thought, the various manifestations of the Second Sophistic and the thought of Imperial times, and the social and ideological developments of the 4th century A.D. His chief aim is to exploit the relevant sources with the help of contemporary conceptual tools and approaches. A secondary area of his scholarly interest is the study of the history of agriculture and landscape, in which changes are unavoidable over a long historical period. Our contemporary landscape is approached as a channel of information about earlier forms of land use by human societies. He has worked as a researcher at KERA, the Greek National Research Foundation from 1987 to 1991, as Assistant Professor and subsequently Associate Professor of Roman History at the Ionian University, and since 2001 has been Associate Professor at the University of the Aegean at Mytilene. He has organized eight international scholarly symposia and meetings in Kerkyra, Zakynthos, Santorini, Mytilene, etc., and has given seminars, lectures and courses at the Universities of Bordeaux III, Montpellier, Besançon, Granada, Lecce, Huelva, etc. He is the compiler of the annual bulletin of book reviews, ‘Regards sur les publications helléniques’, published in the journal, Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne.
Professor Ioannis Gerothanassis
Rector of the University of Ioannina and
Professor of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry
Having graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1974, he was awarded a three-year fellowship by the Greek Scholarship Foundation for postgraduate studies in England. In 1979 he gained an MSc degree in chemical spectroscopy at the School of Chemical Sciences, University of East Anglia, and in 1981 presented his PhD thesis. In 1980 he was awarded a Fellowship by the ‘Swiss Fond National’ for NMR biophysical research at the University of Lausanne’s Institute of Organic Chemistry. His research interests are in natural products chemistry, structural biology and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.From 1981 to 1984 he was a ‘Premier Assistant’ at the University of Lausanne. In 1984 he became a lecturer in the Physical Chemistry section of the Department of Chemistry, School of Natural Sciences, University of Ioannina. In 1986 he became Assistant Professor in the Section of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the same university, in 1990 Associate Professor, and in 1997 Full Professor. In 1994 he was Honorary Research Fellow of the Queen Mary College, University of London. Having chaired several departments at the University of Ioannina, he became Vice-Rector of the University in 2003 and Rector in 2006.
vita | interview
Professor Miltiades Hatzopoulos
Director of the Research Centre of Greek and Roman Antiquity of the National Hellenic Research Foundation
Miltiades Hatzopoulos was born in Athens in 1944. He received his Ph. D. degree in the University of Paris. A founding member of the Research Centre of Greek and Roman Antiquity and director of the Centre since 1995, he has also taught as Professor of Ancient Greek history in the Université Paris X. His research centres around the ancient institutions, epigraphy and historical geography of Macedonia. He is a foreign member of the Académie des Inscriptions of Belles Lettres, a permanent member of the Athens Archaeological Society and a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute. He has been honoured for his manifold scientific contributions with the bronze medal of the Athens Academy. He has written or edited twenty volumes on Ancient Greek History and Philology and has published more than 100 shorter contributions.
vita | interview
Professor Dimitris Kyrtatas
Professor of Ancient History, University of Thessaly
Dimitris Kyrtatas is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Thessaly. He was born in Athens in 1952. He studied at the Universities of Thessaloniki and London, completing his doctoral thesis at Brunel University on ‘The Social Structure of Christian Communities from the first to the third century’ (1977-81). He has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Classical Studies at King’s College, University of London, where he focused on early Christian literature, and also at the Research Centre for Greek Society of the Academy of Athens. From 1985 to 2001 he taught ancient history in the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete. Since 2001 has been teaching the same subject in the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly, where in 2006 he was elected professor. From 2004 to 2006 he was director of the programme of postgraduate studies. Since 2008 he has been Chairman of the Department. He has written a number of books and articles on the social history of Greek antiquity and early Christianity. He has organized many conferences and has edited collective works on related topics.
His publications include the following titles:
The Social Structure of the Early Christian Communities, London 1987 (Greek trans. 1992).
The Revelation of John and the Seven Churches of Asia, Athens 1994 (in Greek).
Paidagogos – Moral Education in Late Greek Antiquity, Athens 1994 (in Greek).
A Woman’s Anger and Other Stories from the Erotic Life of the Ancient Greeks, Athens 1999 (in Greek).
Conquering Antiquity – Historiographical Journeys, Athens 2002 (in Greek).
Apocryphal Stories, Myths and Legends from the World of the First Christians, Athens 2003 (in Greek).
Professor Elisabeth Panayotatos
Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, National Technical University of Athens
Elizabeth Panayotatos was born in Argostoli, Cephalonia. She has studied Development Planning at University College, London (Ph.D.), Urban Planning at Columbia University, N.Y. (MS) and Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (MA).
As Professor at the NTUA since 1984, Elisabeth Panayotatos has been actively involved in academic activities from the positions of Director of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Deputy Chairperson of the Faculty of Architecture, Director of the Laboratory of Planning Methodology and Space Regulation, Chairperson of the Committee for Planning and Development of Graduate studies at the NTUA, member of the NTUA Committee for the second Development Framework for Greece, representative of the Greek Universities to the research working group of the Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences, etc. She has represented Greece in international organizations, taught at universities in Europe and the U.S. and participated in international working groups. She has also served as Director of theNational Centre for Social Research and Chairperson of its Board of Directors (1999-2002).
She has undertaken systematic long term interdisciplinary work on socio-economic, spatial and cultural aspects of development processes at the urban and regional levels, on the restructuring of the productive base and the emerging socio-economic implications on the evaluation and effectiveness of development policy in relation to social factors and needs. These research activities necessitated planning and implementation of research projects bringing together planners, economists, political scientists, statisticians, etc. They provided theoretical insights and policy conclusions, which fed the educational program at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels both within the established curriculum and through specialized seminars and lectures. The research findings have been published in various books and journals. They have also provided public and private sector’s planning agencies with theoretical and practical insights for socio-economic development and spatial organization and planning.
vita | interview
Professor John Papamastorakis
Professor Emeritus of Physics, Department of Physics, University of Crete, Greece
John Papamastorakis obtained his PhD in Observational Astrophysics in 1975 from the Techniche Universitat Munchen (Germany). He joined to University of Crete in 1985 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to an Associate Professor in 1990 and to Professor in 2005. He retired and was elected Emeritus Professor in 2009.
Professor John Petropoulos
Professor of Classical Greek, Democritus University of Thrace
Born in 1956, he studied for one year at the Law School of the University of Athens and continued his studies at the University of Harvard in Classical Philology. He completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford entitled ‘A Survey of Erotic Motifs in Ancient and Medieval Greek Poetry, with particular reference to Modern Greek Folk-Song’. His scholarly interests extend to ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek society, archaeology and social anthropology, together with the application of information science to the humanities. Since 1985 he has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Crete, Harvard (as visiting professor – research fellow), and the Democritus University of Thrace. In 2007 he became a member of the Department of Greek Philology of the Democritus University of Thrace. He has also given open seminars on classical philology and Greek language classes for foreign students. He has participated in committees concerned with the Greek language and its teaching. He was also the founder and (unsalaried) director of the ‘Open University of the Municipality of Alexandroupolis’, 1993-1994.He has given papers at more than 77 seminars, conferences and other scholarly gatherings not only in Greece but chiefly abroad, and has published in total more than 47 scholarly articles, five book reviews and three books.
Professor Grigoris Sifakis
Professor Emeritus of Classical Greek, Universities of Thessaloniki and New York (NYU)
Grigoris Sifakis is Professor Emeritus of Classical Greek at the Universities of Thessaloniki and New York (NYU). He is married with two children. Born in Herakleion in 1935, he studied classical philology at the Universities of Athens and London (UCL). His areas of special interest are ancient drama (sources, history, poetry and theatre production), narrative poetry (ancient, medieval and modern), Aristotle, and modern Greek folk songs. He has taught at the Universities of California (UCLA, 1968-70), Thessaloniki (1970-92), Crete (1978-79) and New York (NYU, 1992-2004). He is an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London) and a Fellow of University College London. He holds honorary doctorates from the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Patras and from the School of Philosophy of the University of Cyprus. He is a Distinguished Member of the Foundation for Research and Technology (ITE). He is Director of the Ancient Theatre Electronic Documentation Programme which is being carried out under the aegis of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies of ITE and aims to form as exhaustive a database as possible of the thousand years of the history of audio-visual spectacles in antiquity.
Among his books are the following:
Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama, London 1967
Parabasis and Animal Choruses, London 1971
The Traditional Theatre of the Karagkiozi, Athens 1976, 1984 (in Greek)
Towards a Poetics of Greek Demotic, Herakleion 1997 (in Greek)
Aristotle on the Function of Tragic Poetry, Heraklion 2001
Studies on Ancient Theatre (collected studies), Herakleion 2007. A similar collection of Modern Greek studies is forthcoming from MIET.
vita | interview
Professor Theodosios Tassios
Professor Emeritus of Engineering, National Technical University of Athens
Theodosios Tassios is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He was born in 1930 in Kastoria, northern Greece. After studying civil engineering at NTUA (1948-53) and at the Centre Études Sup., Paris (1953-4), he gained a doctorate in engineering at NTUA (1955-8). His research interests are in the fields of structures seismic design, the conservation of monuments and the philosophy of technology. More broadly, his interests cover education and research policy, the National Plan on Terminology, the history of Ancient Greek technology and moral philosophy. He joined NTUA as an associate professor in 1964, becoming full professor in 1969. He is visiting professor in several universities abroad. He is a Member of the Academy of Sciences of Torino, and belongs to several national and international professional associations. Honorary doctorates have been conferred on him by three universities (Liège, Nanjing and Thrace). He is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute Honorary President of the International Association of Concrete (CEB) and Honorary President of the Greek Association of Philosophy. He is an international consultant to UNESCO and UNIDO and to the European Union (Code-making, Auditing). He is also a member of the editorial board of six international journals. He has been awarded the Medal of the City of Paris. He is the author of 370 papers and forty books.
Professor Petros Themelis
Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology, University of Crete
Petros Themelis is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Crete. He was born in Thessaloniki in 1936. He is married with one son. He studied archaeology at the University of Thessaloniki and at the University of Munich, where he completed his doctoral thesis on the topic ‘Early Greek Funerary Monuments’. His research focuses on ancient architecture, sculpture, topography and iconography, and also on ancient cult and funerary customs. He has served as Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs and Chairman of the Research Council, Director of the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, Head of the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology and Speleology, Curator and Ephor of Atiquities in the regions of Eleias-Messenia, Attica-Euboea, Phokis-Locris-Aetoloakarnania, and scientific assistant of the Archaeological Service of Thessaloniki. He is the recipient of many honorary awards from Municipalities, Cities, Communities and Schools, amongst which is Gold Commander of the Order of the Palm awarded by the President of the Hellenic Republic in 2005 for his work in teaching and archaeological restoration.
Professor Dimitris Tsoungarakis
Rector of the Ionian University
Professor of Byzantine History
Dimitrios Tsoungarakis is Professor of Byzantine History and Rector of the Ionian University. He was born in Athens in 1946. He studied in the Department of History and Archaeology and the Department of English Studies of the University of Athens. He pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford (D.Phil.) and occupied a post-doctoral fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Center, Washington D.C. He was a Research Fellow at the Center of Research for Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens. Since 1985 he has taught Byzantine history at the Ionian University in the Department of History, of which he was chairman for six years. He is also a member of the research group of the Cretan Exploration Project (leader Prof. L.V. Watrous, State University of New York at Buffalo) and scientific head of the Postgraduate Programme ‘History of the city and building construction after the 16th century.’ He has participated in many conferences in Greece and abroad and also in many research programmes. He is Head of the Research Programme “The Monasteries of Greece I. The Monasteries of Crete” of the Center of Research of Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens (the creation of an information bank for the monasteries in Greece), Head of the Research Programme of the Department of History of the Ionian University for the history, geography etc. of the district of the Deme of Thinalia of Corfu.
He has written many articles on Greek history in the Byzantine period besides the following monographs:
Introduction to Byzantine Sigillography (in Greek), Athens 2000
The Life of Leontios Patriarch of Jerusalem, Leiden and New York 1993
The Strategikon of Kekaumenos (in Greek), Athens 1993
Byzantine Crete (in Greek)
Crete 1990, Roman Crete (in Greek), Crete 1990
Byzantine Crete. From the 5th cent. to the Venetian Conquest, Athens 1988
vita | interview
Professor Stelios Virvidakis
Professor of Philosophy, University of Athens
Stelios Virvidakis was born in Athens in 1955. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Athens. A graduate of Athens College, he studied philology and philosophy at the University of Athens and the University of Paris I, and holds a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. His chief interests are epistemology, ethics and the history of philosophy. He has taught philosophy at the American College of Greece (Deree), the Polytechnic of Crete, and the Universities of Crete, Thessaloniki and Athens. He has also been visiting professor at the University of Rennes I and at the University of Cyprus. Since 2005 he has been Professor of Philosophy in the Department of the Methodology, History and Theory of Science at the University of Athens. He is a member of various Greek and international philosophical societies, the European Cultural Parliament, the Organisation francophone pour la formation et la recherche européenne en sciences humaines, and the governing body of the Fédération internationale des sociétés philosophiques. In 2006 the French government appointed him Chevalier of the Order of Academic Palms. He is the author of the monograph “La robustesse du bien” (Nimes 1996) and of a number of textbooks for teaching philosophy at secondary school level. He had published articles in Greek in international learned journals and in collective volumes, proceedings of conferences and philosophical dictionaries.
Professor Stavros Zenios
Professor of Finance and Management Science, University of Cyprus
Rector of the University of Cyprus
Stavros Zenios is Professor of Finance and Management Science at the University of Cyprus and Senior Fellow at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He is Rector of the University of Cyprus, an office to which he has twice been elected since 2002. In 2007 he was elected President of UNICA, the Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe, at their Moscow Conference. He read mathematics at the University of London and electrical engineering at the Greek Higher Technological Institute. He pursued his postgraduate studies at Princeton University, U.S.A. His doctoral thesis was awarded a Distinction by the Scientific Society of Business Research. He has been assistant Professor, associate Professor and full Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been visiting Professor at universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Vienna, the University of Haifa and the Athens University of Economics. In 2000 he was elected a Marie Curie Fellow of the European Commission and was a scholar of the National Research Foundation of Italy at the Universities of Milan and Venice. He has served as Director of the Center of Banking and Financial Research of the University of Cyprus, which has been elected a Centre of Excellence on Computational Finance and Economics by the European Commission. The programming methodologies which he has developed are used today by government bodies, banks and insurance companies in countries of the European Union and the U.S.A. He holds two U.S. patents. He has been advisor to organizations such as the World Bank and the European Mortgage Federation. With his wife Nina he has climbed Kilimanjaro, reaching Uhuru Peak at 5,892 metres.
