Featured Alumni

Stelios Zachariou (MA UNO; PhD ABD University of Athens)

Profession: Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs Historian and Consultant

Stelios Zachariou graduated from UNO with a Master’s degree in History in 1994. While at UNO, his focus was on Cold War Studies with an emphasis on Greek-American relations, as his thesis, “The Road to the Garrison State: Greek-American Relations from 1952 to 1963” indicates. In compiling the sources for writing the thesis, Stelios conducted research at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, a research trip for which he received one of the first “Boebel travel grants” of the University of New Orleans’ History Department. Principal advisers of the thesis, which was later published in the journal Hellenic Studies, were Dr. Ambrose, Dr. Bischof and Dr. Logsdon.

Stelios Zachariou returned to Greece where he did his obligatory military service in the army as a translator and interpreter for the Ordnance Corps; upon completion he continued his graduate studies at the University of Athens were he focused on the impact of the Marshall Plan in Greece. In conjunction with his graduate studies, he begun working for the research and archival declassification department of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the National representative to the Archives Committee for the declassification of NATO documents for historical research at NATO headquarters in Brussels, was involved in the research and publication of numerous thematic volumes of diplomatic documents pertaining to Greek foreign policy, and headed several missions abroad to repatriate and catalogue important record groups that were held in embassies and foreign archives.

Stelios, in addition to his editorial work for the publications of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has published several academic articles focusing on Greek - American relations in the early Cold War years with an emphasis on economic and political reconstruction after the war. He has received several research grants including the Princeton University Friends of the Library Fellowship to conduct research at the Seely G. Mudd Library as well as the Marshall/Baruch Fellowship offered by the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington VA.

Currently, Stelios is working as a scientific advisor for the U.N. Division of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, following matters relevant to disarmament and proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

About his learning experience in the UNO History Graduate Program Stelios says: “My graduate studies at UNO's Department of History crystallized my academic orientation, and defined my career path to this day.  The teaching methodology which stressed a practical historiographical approach presented by the highly erudite staff of the department was to become the fundamental building block for my Ph.D. studies as well as my professional career at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  My research and writing since has been characterized by the analytical approach taught at UNO.”

(recommended and written by Günter Bischof)

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