Historian Mark Mazower Honored at NYC Event

The American School of Classical Studies at Athens honored prominent British historian Mark Mazower for his outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge of post-antique Greece.

The ceremony was held during the American School’s seventh annual Gala which took place in New York City.

All proceeds from the Gala directly benefit the School’s academic, archaeological exploration, outreach, publications, and research programs.

These vital funds help the School strengthen its position as one of the preeminent centers for the study of the Greek world and continue its mission of preserving, promoting, and protecting Greece’s past from antiquity to the present day.

Mazower the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University received the Gennadius Prize.

In accepting the award, Mazower said, “Receiving this prestigious award from the American School is a tremendous honor, and I am truly grateful for the recognition. As one of the world’s premier research libraries in Hellenic studies, the Gennadius Library is an indispensable resource for scholars and students alike, and a testament to the enduring legacy of Greek civilization.”

Distinguished guests attending included some previous honorees, including The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, who received the Gennadius Prize in 2018, as well as recent Athens Prize recipients, Ed Cohen, and John Camp.

Mazower was awarded honorary Greek citizenship

A specialist in modern Greece, 20th-century Europe, and international history, he has written more than ten books and contributes regularly to The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books among others.

In 2016, he and director Constantine Giannaris made the film, Techniques of the Body, a meditation on the refugee crisis in Greek history.

He was awarded the Duff Cooper Prize for his most recent book, The Greek Revolution: 1821 and The Making of Modern Europe (Penguin Books).

He is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation founding director of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, which opened at Reid Hall in Paris in the fall 2018, bringing together scholars and leading artists, writers, composers and filmmakers from around the world.

In January 2022, Mazower was awarded honorary Greek citizenship. He was honored for “the promotion of Greece, its long history and its culture to the international general public.”

He studied classical literature and philosophy at Oxford University and International Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he graduated in 1981 and 1983 respectively.

He has been Professor of History at Birkbeck University in London, the University of Sussex and Princeton University.

Mazower has been particularly interested in the 1821 Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman occupation, a fact that earned him a membership in the “Greece 2021” committee, which coordinated events celebrating the bicentennial celebration of the Greek struggle for independence.