On May 8th, 2019, Professor John Peponis received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Thessaly, Greece. The award was conferred in recognition of distinguished contributions to the discipline of architecture, architectural research and architectural education in Greece and abroad.

The University of Thessaly was founded in 1984, and the Department of Architecture was founded in 1999 and celebrated its 30 year anniversary.

During the period 1992-2005 Peponis also worked as a part time professor at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he helped initiate the first post-professional research-based Master of Science degree in architecture. He was also invited to offer lectures at the Universities of Patras and Thessaly.

At the University of Thessaly, he helped organize workshops and coordinate conferences. He was on the organizing committee for the conference on Representation and Thought in Architecture that was run  by professors Trova, Manolidis and Papaconstantinou in 2005, and brought together 250 attendees from all Schools of Architecture in Greece and several schools in Europe and the USA, including Georgia Tech, leading to a major book on the subject. Peponis’s book Chorographies: the architectural construction of meaning, written in Greek, has been widely included in reading lists in all Schools of Architecture in Greece since its publication in 1997.

“The development of new ideas, theories and methods always involves intense and persistent face-to-face communication with like-minded people.,” said Peponis. “Some of the people I have been comparing notes with over the years work at the University of Thessaly. I like to think that this recognition reflects not only on my own work but also on the common intellectual ethos that propels fundamental advances in architecture as a discipline. It is also deeply rewarding to be recognized in one’s home country.”