Michael B. Cosmopoulos

Michael Basil Cosmopoulos is Professor of Archaeology and holder of the Hellenic Government-Karakas Foundation Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis He is an anthropologically trained archaeologist specializing in state formation, social memory, and mystery cults.

His specifi research interests are the social, political, and cultural history of Bronze Age Greece, about which he has published seventeen books and more than one hundred and thirty articles and scholarly papers in international journals.

Cosmopoulos has excavated at several ancient sites in Greece and Ukraine, including Ancient Corinth, Eleusis, Epidauros, Ithaca, Mycenae, Olbia, Oropos, and Pylos. He directs the interdisciplinary excavation of the Mycenaean palace at Iklaina, in Pylos. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Corresponding Member of the Athens Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2022, he was decorated by the President of Greece with the Gold Cross of the Order of Phoenix.

Cosmopoulos studied Archaeology, History, and Classical Languages at the University of Athens (B.A.), the University of Sorbonne-Paris IV (D.E.U.G.), and Washington University in St. Louis (M.A. and Ph.D.). He also holds a Diploma in Underwater Archaeology from the Council of Europe.