Aglaia Lily Macrakis

Dr. Aglaia "Lily" Macrakis née Chryssanthacopoulou, a distinguished historian, educator, and dean, died on September 17, 2025 in Boston. Born on July 6, 1926 in Athens, she was the daughter of Chryssanthos Chryssanthacopoulos and Irini Karabini. She lived for many years in Belmont and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a child, Lily demonstrated great intellectual gifts and a passion for history, which she was able to pursue at the University of Athens in spite of the German occupation of Greece and the Greek Civil War. After the war, she was part of a team of newly minted History and Archaeology B.A.s who helped identify the ancient treasures of the Acropolis Museum hidden in caves from the Nazis. Determined both to do graduate work in history and to marry her future husband, Michael S. Macrakis, who had left Athens to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Harvard, she managed to persuade Harvard to accept her, and her parents to let her marry a man of her own choosing. The week she stepped off the Queen Mary in Boston Harbor, she married Michael, attended her first graduate seminar, and moved to Belmont, Massachusetts, where she and her husband built a life centered on a exceptional group of Greek friends who studied at Harvard and M.I.T. in the 1950s and 1960s, and with whom they shared lively Easter and New Years celebrations for thirty years.

Dr. Macrakis's remarkable academic career, which had stalled in the late 1950s when she had her three children, was put back on track when she was selected as a member of the inaugural group of Fellows of the Radcliffe Institute – a cohort that included the poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin – and where she began work on her biography of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos. The biography became her Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard. The Greek edition, Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1910): The Making of a National Leader, received the Prize of the Academy of Athens.

Her Radcliffe fellowship also launched her long and distinguished career at Regis College (Weston) which started in 1964, first as a lecturer, then as professor, and eventually Chair of the History Department. A visionary educator, she founded and directed the Greek Studies Program and co-directed the European Studies Program, motivating students not only as an inspiring lecturer, but also through stimulating cultural activities and educational travel. She was a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Boston College, and the Universities of Crete and of the Aegean. She retired from Regis in 1998. But that retirement was not an end to her academic life, rather a transition to a new leadership role: from 2002, at 74, until 2011, she served as the Dean of Hellenic College (Brookline), making new friends and inspiring another generation of undergraduates.

Her legacy is one of rigorous scholarship, tireless mentorship, and pioneering leadership in Greek studies. She helped shape generations of students and scholars, opening spaces for research and understanding in modern Greek history, literature, and culture. She was long an officer of the Modern Greek Studies Association, and its President in 1977-1979. She also served on the advisory boards of College Year in Athens, the Helicon Society of New England, the Aegean Institute, and other cultural organizations.

In recognition of her lifetime of scholarship and mentorship, the festschrift "Historical Poetics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Greece: Essays in Honor of Lily Macrakis" was published as a special issue of Classics@, the journal of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies.

After her husband's death, she lived for many years in an apartment in her son's house in Cambridge, where, when not at the B.S.O. or dinner with friends, she had dinner with her grandchildren and their friends, which was one of the great joys of her life. She also spent many summers in Athens with her daughter Michèle and the mountains of Georgia with her daughter Kristie.

Dr. Macrakis is survived by her children, Stavros (with his partner Robin Fleming) and Michèle; her granddaughters Eleni (with her husband Charlie Klemmer and Lily's great-grandson Adrian Loukas Klemmer) and Clio (with her partner Tucker Wheeler); and her former daughter-in-law Dominique Stassart. She was predeceased by her sister Jenny in 1947, her husband Michael in 2001, and her daughter Kristie in 2022.

A memorial service will be announced at a future date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to the Modern Greek Studies Association or to College Year in Athens.

-------------------

Historical Poetics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Greece: Essays in Honor of Lily Macrakis

https://classics-at.chs.harvard.edu/volume/classics10-historical-poetics-in-nineteenth-and-twentieth-century-greece-essays-in-honor-of-lily-macrakis/

Modern Greek Studies Association

https://www.mgsa.org/

College Year in Athens

https://cyathens.org/