Executive Director, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.), Harvard University
Yota Batsaki is the executive director of Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard University research center, museum, and historic garden located in Washington DC. She is also Principal Investigator for the Plant Humanities Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Previously, she was a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Her research interests lie in Enlightenment literature and philosophy; the cultural histories of plants; and the movement of people, objects, and ideas in the eastern Mediterranean. Among her publications are three co-edited volumes: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Dumbarton Oaks, 2016); Imperial Geographies in Byzantine and Ottoman Space (Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013); and Fictions of Knowledge: Fact, Evidence, Doubt (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011). In 2002, Batsaki co-founded the Harvard Summer Program in Greece, where she continues to teach.