Gale Visiting Professorship
Discovering the Hellenic world within and beyond Greece
Each year the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA) brings a Visiting Professor to tour Australia.
Our Visiting Professorship programme brings to Australia a distinguished scholar of Hellenic studies to undertake a national lecture tour to our Institutional Members over August and September each year.
Thanks to the generosity of Janet Gale, we are delighted to be able to continue our Visiting Professorship programme through 2027. Janet is a long-standing member of the AAIA who has championed our endeavours. We are exceptionally grateful for her continued support of the Institute in promoting classical studies in Australia.
From its foundation in 1987, the Visiting Professorship has been generously supported by a number of individuals. These include Mr Sidney Londish; Mr Peter Burrows; Professor John Chalmers; Mr Michael Diamond; Mr Timothy Harding; Mrs Pauline Harding; Dr Robert Harper; Dr Monica Jackson; and Professor J.A. Young. In addition, the Visiting Professorship has been supported the Thyne Reid Foundation. We thank our sponsors for their generosity, commitment and support.
Alexander Mazarakis Ainian, born in Athens in 1959. He studied History of Art and Archaeology at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and completed his PhD at the University of London (UCL) with a scholarship from the "A. Onassis" Public Benefit Foundation. He initially worked as an archaeologist at the Greek Ministry of Culture. He taught for eight years at the Department of History of the Ionian University and since 1999 he is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Thessaly. He served as head of the department, director of graduate studies, director of the Laboratory of Archaeology and of the Archaeological Collection of the Archaeology Dpt. Since 2017 he is the director of the University of Thessaly Press. He has taught at the postgraduate programs of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the National Technical University of Athens and as a Visiting Professor at Paris I/Panthéon-Sorbonne, at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and at UCL-Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) and continuously during the acad. years 2013-14 to 2015-16 in Paris IV-Sorbonne. He was awarded the prestigious “Chaire Internationale Blaise Pascal” for 2012 by the French state. He has directed several European and National Research Programs. His field projects include Skala Oropos and Vari in Attica, Kythnos in the Cyclades, Soros in Magnesia, Kefala on Skiathos. In 2004 he organized the archaeological exhibition "Archaeological Explorations" at the University of Thessaly. He organized 11 international conferences, as well as workshops. He has given numerous lectures and participated in congresses in Greece and abroad (Europe, USA and Canada). He has published several books and studies dealing with Early Iron Age Architecture in Greece, Homeric questions, and the results of his excavations, in Greek, English, French, German and Italian. He has also edited the volumes of the Proceedings of 11 International Conferences. He is a member of the scientific editorial boards of recognized scientific journals and publications, such as Hesperia, Pharos, Centre Camille Julien (Aix-Marseille). He is a member of the Archaeological Society at Athens, the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, ICOM-Greece etc. In 2016 he was elected Corresponding Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris and in 2024 received a honorary doctorate by Paris 1/Panthéon-Sorbonne.Please see the events and news page for dates.
