# Roger Owen receives UCLA’s 2011 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award November 29, 2011 CMES is pleased to report that Roger Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History, has been awarded the 2011 Giorgio Levi Della Vida medal for excellence in Islamic Studies from the Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA. [The Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award](http://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/publications/article.asp?parentid=14544) is awarded “to outstanding scholars whose work has significantly and lastingly advanced the study of Islamic civilization.” The medal will be presented to Professor Owen at a scholarly conference held at UCLA May 24 & 25, 2012. The theme of the conference, which was chosen by Professor Owen, will be “Structures of Personalized Power in the Modern Middle East: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Party Bosses,” a topic that complements his new book *The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life* (Harvard University Press, forthcoming in May 2012). Professor Owen will deliver the keynote presentation at the conference, and select the other scholars invited to participate. Professor Owen’s extensive contributions to the field of Middle Eastern studies, and the economic and political history of the Middle East in particular, have been recognized numerous times. His other recent awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Middle Eastern Studies in 2009 and the prestigious [“Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies 2010”](/news/roger-owen-honored-world-congress-middle-eastern-studies) from the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) in Barcelona in July 2010. Professor Owen is currently finishing up his last semester teaching at Harvard. He is retiring after 45 years of teaching, including 19 years at Harvard and 26 years at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, where he was director of the Middle East Centre four times. Professor Owen served as director of CMES from 1996 to 1999. See also:- [ CMES News ](/news-type/cmes-news) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)