Stevan K. Pavlowitch

Biography Stevan Kosta Pavlowitch was born in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 7 September 1933, into a well-known Serbian family of diplomats from the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. his grandfather, also named Stevan K. Pavlović, was an influential lawyer, interpreter and diplomat who had served with the Ministry of Foreign affairs, was a member of the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919–1920, and had received the Legion of Honour. His great-grandfather Kosta Pavlović was the first mayor of Niš and a member of the Liberal Party.

Pavlowitch began his schooling in Bucharest, where his father was stationed as a diplomat. Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the family followed the Yugoslav royal government to the United Kingdom where his father was appointed chief of the Cabinet of the Prime Ministers Dušan Simović, Slobodan Jovanović and Miloš Trifunović then in 1943 First Secretary of the Yugoslav Embassy. In 1965, he joined the staff of the University of Southampton and in 1997 became the emeritus professor of Balkan history, and was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. With his research on the history of Yugoslavia, rejection of essentialist, Balkanist or Orientalist as well as predetermined or simplistic nationalists interpretations of history, he became one of the most prominent and respected scholars in the field.