Dimitri Kitsikis

Dimitri Kitsikis (Δημήτρης Κιτσίκης; 2 June 1935 – 28 August 2021) was a Greek Philosopher, Turkologist and Sinologist, as well as a Professor of International Relations and Geopolitics. He also published poetry in French and Greek. Dimitri Kitsikis was a Turkologist and Sinologist Professor of International Relations and Geopolitics at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada since 1970, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; he received his doctoral degree in 1963 from the Sorbonne, Paris, under the supervision of Pierre Renouvin. He has been named one of the "three top geopolitical thinkers worldwide, Karl Haushofer, Halford Mackinder and Dimitri Kitsikis". While pursuing his doctoral studies in Paris, he worked from 1960 to 1962 as a research associate at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He belonged to a notable Greek Orthodox family of intellectuals and acclaimed professionals of 19th-century Greece. He held both French and Canadian citizenships, in addition to his Greek citizenship. His father, Nicolas Kitsikis (1887–1978), rector of the Polytechnic School in Athens, the most famous civil engineer of Greece, was a senator and an MP. His uncle, Konstantinos Kitsikis (1893–1969), a celebrated architect, Nicolas' younger brother, was also a professor at the Athens Polytechnic School. His grandfather, a chief justice, Dimitri Kitsikis senior (1850–1898), had settled in Athens, in 1865, from Lesbos, his native island and was married to Cassandra (Κασσάνδρα), the sister of a member of the Greek Parliament, Dimitri Hatsopoulos (Δημήτρης Χατσόπουλος), 1844–1913, born in Karpenisi. His mother, Beata Kitsikis née Petychakis (Μπεάτα Πετυχάκη), was born in Herakleion, Crete, from a wealthy Cretan family and Greek Italian nobles from Trieste of mixed Roman Catholic and Orthodox origin. Her father, Emmanuel Petychakis founded a beverage production plant in Cairo, Egypt and her stepfather Aristidis Stergiadis was the High Commissioner of Greece in Smyrna (Izmir) from 1919 to 1922.