Ioannis Mylonopoulos

Professor Mylonopoulos was educated at the University of Athens and the Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg (Ph.D. summa cum laude 2001). Before coming to Columbia in 2008, he was Research Associate at the University of Heidelberg, Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna, Junior Professor at the University of Erfurt, and Fellow of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. In the spring of 2015, he was visiting professor at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and the first Columbia professor to teach Art Humanities in Paris. Mylonopoulos has received fellowships and grants from the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, the German Archaeological Society, the Ernst-Kirsten Society, the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation, the Gerda-Henkel Foundation, and the German Research Council. In 2011/12, he was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 2011, he was awarded Columbia’s Faculty Mentorship Award and in 2014, the Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award (Lenfest). Mylonopoulos’s book, Πελοπόννησος οἰκητήριον Ποσειδῶνος. Heiligtümer und Kulte des Poseidon auf der Peloponnes (Liège 2003) won the Margarete Häcker Award for the best book in Classical Studies in German language in 2002. In 2017, he co-curated the exhibition “A world of emotions” at the Onassis Cultural Center NY, which later travelled to Greece and was presented at the Acropolis Museum, Athens. The exhibition was voted the best 2017 exhibition worldwide and was recognized with the Youniversal Award by Global Fine Art Awards. Mylonopoulos is passionate about the study of WW II. He has already translated four books – two of them while he was still a graduate student at the University of Heidelberg – dealing with the Nazi-occupation of and Nazi crimes against humanity in Greece. Between 2016 and 2021, he directed Columbia University’s Program in Hellenic Studies. Since 2014, Mylonopoulos directs Columbia University’s first excavation in Greece, at the sanctuary of Poseidon in ancient Onchestos, a sacred site mentioned already in the Iliad. Between 2019 and 2022, he was – together with Kathryn Yatrakis – the representative of Columbia University in the initiative of the Institute for International Education and the Ministry of Education of Greece with the purpose of developing or expanding academic partnerships among US universities/colleges and Greek universities.