Past Chairholders

Constantine Arvanitopoulos is the Constantine Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and European Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Constantine Arvanitopoulos is a former Minister of Education, and Professor of International Relations at the Department of International and European Studies at Panteion University, Athens. He is a graduate of Panteion University and holds an MA and a PhD in International Relations from the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC.

Professor of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business (since 1990). Also Research Associate of the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Fellow of the European Economic Association (EEA).

From September 2016 until September 2019 he served as the Constantine Karamanlis Professor of Hellenic and European Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. From September 1996 until October 2009 he was an elected member of the Hellenic Parliament and from March 2004 until January 2009 he served as Greece’s Minister of Economy and Finance. Between 1994 and 1998 he was an elected member of the Council of the European Economic Association. From 1984 to 1992 he served as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) and Reader (Associate Professor) at the University of London (Birkbeck College). He has served as a consultant to a number of international institutions, including the European Commission and the World Bank. He has also been a Research Fellow at the Centre for Labour Economics of the London School of Economics (1981-82) and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) (1985-1999). During 1992-1993 he served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors of Greece.

Holds a BSc (1977) in Economics from the University of Athens, and an MSc (1978) and a PhD (1981) in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). For his 1981 PhD thesis, supervised by George Akerlof, Steve Nickell and Chris Pissarides, he was awarded the Sayers Prize of the University of London for distinguished doctoral dissertations in monetary economics.

His research focuses on international macroeconomics, and more particularly on inflation and unemployment, economic growth, exchange rate regimes and monetary and fiscal policy. He has published five books and over 40 papers in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Economic Journal, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Economica, Economic Policy and others. His book (with Sophia Lazaretou), “The Drachma: From the Phoenix to the Euro”, a monetary and economic history of Greece since the 19th century, was awarded the 2003 Prize of the Academy of Athens. His most recent book is Dynamic Macroeconomics (MIT Press 2019) was completed while at Fletcher. Was born in Athens in 1955 and is married with three children.

Professor Kostas A. Lavdas

Professor Michalis Psalidopoulos

Professor Psalidopoulos is Professor of the History of Economic Thought at the Department of Economics, University of Athens. He was educated in Athens and Berlin and was a Fulbright Fellow at Duke, a Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at Princeton and a Visiting Research Professor at King’s College, London. His research focuses on national traditions in the History of Economics and the relation between economic thought, economic policy and good governance, especially in Southeastern Europe. His most recent book is Economists and Economic policy in Modern Greece (in Greek, 2010). He has also published articles in History of Political Economy, in The European Journal for the History of Economic Thought and in History of Economic Ideas. He is currently involved in a comparative project of economic experiences and policies in Europe’s less industrialized countries during the Great Depression. He speaks English, German and French fluently, as well as Greek.

Professor George Th. Mavrogordatos

Professor George Mavrogordatos is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Athens, Greece. He was educated in Greece and the United States and was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the American Political Science Association (“for the best book published in the United States on government, politics or international affairs”) for his dissertation Stillborn Republic in 1984. An Adviser to the Opposition during the debate on the new Greek Constitution, 1975 he founded and edited (with N. P. Diamandouros) Modern Greek Society: A Social Science Newsletter, 1973-1980. He was a member of the National Council for Research and Technology in Greece between 2005-2008.

Professor Alexandros Yannis

Dr. Alexandros Yannis was educated in Greece and Switzerland and has extensive international experience in multilateral diplomacy with the European Union and the United Nations. His experience includes working with the European Union Special Envoy to Somalia (1994-1997), the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General in Kosovo (1999-2000) and in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva (2001). Currently he is policy coordinator on global issues and responsible for energy diplomacy in the European External Action Service (EEAS) of the European Union.

Professor Kostas A. Lavdas

Professor Kostas A. Lavdas is Professor of European Politics and Director of the Center for Political Research and Documentation (KEPET) at the University of Crete, Greece, where he has been a Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and a University Vice-Rector. He was educated in Greece, the UK (London School of Economics and the University of Manchester) and the USA (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and has served as a professor and a researcher at various universities in Europe and the USA. His many books and his articles in international journals (including The European Journal of Political Research and West European Politics) in English, Greek and German have focused on EU politics and policy, Greek politics, interest groups in comparative political analysis, and applied political theory.

Professor Dimitris Keridis

Professor Dimitris Keridis is Associate Professor of International Politics and Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations at Panteion University, Athens. He was educated at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has written extensively in English and in Greek on Greek foreign policy, US foreign policy and the war on terror, Turkey, the Balkans, the effects of disaster diplomacy, EU foreign policy and European security. He is a senior research associate at the Karamanlis Foundation and serves as the Director of Navarino Network (a public policy think-tank in Thessaloniki) and of Olympia Summer Academy.

Presentation: “Spreading Democracy East and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership”

Professor George Prevelakis

Professor George Prevelakis is Professor of Human and Regional Geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, France. He was educated at Athens Technical University and Paris-Sorbonne and has written extensively on geopolitics, Greek geopolitics, the Hellenic Diaspora, the interplay between culture, politics and economics, and the Balkans. He is co-director of the French academic journal Anatoli (CNRS Editions). Currently Professor Prevelakis is Greece’s Ambassador to the OECD.

Professor Thanos M. Veremis

Professor Veremis, who was the first Karamanlis Chairholder, is Professor Emeritus of Political History at the University of Athens, Greece. He was educated at Boston University and the University of Oxford and has served as a professor and a researcher at universities in Europe and the USA. His many books and articles in English and in Greek have focused on Greek political history and foreign policy, Greek-Turkish relations, Balkan reconstruction, and Southeastern Europe. He served as President of Greece’s National Council of Education, 2004-2010.