Prof. Em. Lila Leontidou

School of Humanities

Hellenic Open University

Short CV: 

Lila Leontidou is Professor Emerita of Geography and European Culture at the Hellenic Open University (ΕΑΠ) since 2020, where she was a Professor since 2002 and has been elected twice the Dean of the School of Humanities (2003-8). She has been awarded the prize of academic excellence at ΕΑΠ in 2017 and has been honoured by the Festschrift Geographies in a Liquid Epoch: Critical essays for Space, Society and Culture in Honour of Lila Leontidou (Athens: Propobos 2019), authored in Greek and English by 35 international academics.

She has studied Architecture in Athens (National Technical University, NTU - EMΠ), Geography and Spatial Governance in London (MSc, LSE) and has been awarded a Ph.D from the University of London in 1981. She has been elected at different times a senior member of permanent staff in four Greek Universities and a British one (Kings College London, where she contributed in the establishment of the Μ.Α. Mediterranean Studies), from which she returned to Greece in 1996, in order to lead the establishment of the very first degree-course of Geography in the country, at the University of the Aegean.

She has also been a Senior Fellow at the LSE (2012-3) and at the Johns Hopkins University (1986-7). She has been invited as a Visiting Professor twice in France (Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne 2008-9, Université de Caen 1999-2000) and at the University of the Peloponnese (2014-18). She was a visiting scholar (for shorter terms) in 15 European universities, and a representative or expert or consultant at UN ECE, OECD, EU DG XI, EU DG V, and at five Greek public organisations. She is member of several editorial boards and learned societies.

Professor Leontidou has been an academic leader in 24 international competitive research projects, has (co-)organized 30 major international conferences and numerous national ones, and has travelled extensively to present papers. She has published 250 articles and books in Greek, English, French, and her work has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese.