Sophia N. Antonopoulou

Sophia N. Antonopoulou (Σοφία Ν. Αντωνοπούλου; born 1947) is a professor at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and holds a PhD in economics from the University College London, UK.

She has published four books as well as scientific and opinion articles in numerous publications in Greece and abroad.

Antonopoulou was born in Athens, in 1947.

She completed her primary education at the Tossitsion Arsakion High School of Athens, where she developed a strong interest in philosophy, reading Plato systematically.

At the age of eighteen she wrote her first philosophical essays, in which she analyzed and interpreted the theory of Ideas of Plato.

Antonopoulou studied civil engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), she graduated in 1971 and worked as a civil engineer in construction firms and consultants between 1971 and 1975.

She was appointed as an assistant at the School of Architecture, NTUA in 1976 and was granted a sabbatical to pursue postgraduate studies in economics at the University College London, UK in 1980.

Since 1976 she has been teaching at the School of Architecture, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning (NTUA), originally as an assistant (1976), a lecturer (1989), an assistant professor (1993), an associate professor (2003), and since 2009 as a full professor.

Antonopoulou's research interests focus on the Greek and international economy, as well as on philosophy.

She returned to Athens and resumed her duties at the NTUA in 1983.

She was awarded her PhD by the University College London, UK, in 1987.

In 1989 she published the work The Political and Economic Thought of Rosa Luxemburg.

The Critique of K. Marx’s Capital (Papazissis, Athens, 1989) (in Greek), where she exposed the critique of Luxemburg to Karl Marx's Capital, Volume I, going further to show that the 'solution' that Luxemburg gave to the problem of the expanded reproduction of capital was in its turn problematic.

For the first time, in this work Sophia Antonopoulou exposed her view that Marx's Capital forms a theoretical economic paradigm, which in essence constitutes an analysis in which the class struggle is absent, a dimension fundamental to the capitalist economy and society.

This work was published before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

It influenced the Greek intelligentsia and was characterized as prophetic.

Sophia Antonopoulou developed this critique of Marx and Marxism in her book The Marxist Theory of Development and its Convergence with the Bourgeois Theoretical Paradigm (Papazissis, Athens, 1991) (in Greek), in which she criticizes the theoretical model that Marx had developed with respect to the economy, society and history, as well as Marx's philosophical theory (Dialectical and Historical Materialism).

In 1991 she published an analysis of the post-war Greek economy and society entitled The Post War Transformation of the Greek Economy and the Settlement Phenomenon 1950-1980 (Papazisis, Athens, 1991) (in Greek) based on her PhD thesis.

In 2008 she published a multilateral and complex analysis of contemporary capitalism entitled Contemporary Capitalism and Globalization (Exandas, Athens, 2008) (in Greek).