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Director
École française d'Athènes
| Appointee | Catherine Virlouvet |
|---|---|
| Role | Director |
| Organisation | École française d'Athènes |
| Domain | Sciences |
| Start | 1 September 2011 |
| End | 31 August 2019 |
| Notes | First woman Director of the French School at Athens |
Institutional context
The École française d'Athènes (French School at Athens) is one of the five French foreign academic schools and the senior French archaeological research body operating in Greece. It was founded in 1846 and conducts excavations at Delphi, Delos, Argos, Thasos, and other major sites. The Director is the senior officer of the school. From 1846 through 2011 every Director was male — a span of 165 years.
Career path
Catherine Virlouvet is a Roman historian and archaeologist with a PhD from the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille). Her research focuses on the economic and social history of ancient Rome, particularly the annona (Rome's grain supply system) and the demographics of the late Roman Republic.
Appointment
She was appointed Director of the École française d'Athènes effective 1 September 2011. She is the first woman to lead the school in its 165-year history.
Tenure
Eight years. Tenure included continued field operations across the school's major Greek sites, the ongoing publication programme through the school's Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, and the school's contribution to the international scholarly response to the Greek financial crisis of 2010–2018. She left the directorship on 31 August 2019.
Cluster context
Virlouvet's 2011 appointment is the dataset's second European archaeological-institute first-woman event of that year, following Friederike Fless at the German Archaeological Institute (April 2011) by five months. Both events occur at the most senior level of the European archaeological-research-institute structure.