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Mark Lowen

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Mark Lowen
Lowen in Italy
NationalityBritish
EducationBalliol College, Oxford
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
OccupationJournalist
Years active2005 - Present
Known forBBC Correspondent in Greece, Turkey and Italy
Spouse
Pedro Penim
(m. 2018)
Children1
ParentEve Karpf (mother)
RelativesNatalia Karp (grandmother)
Josef Karpf (grandfather)
Anne Karpf (aunt)

Mark Lowen is a British journalist. He is the BBC News Southern Europe correspondent, based in Rome. He was previously based in Turkey, Greece and Serbia. He moved to Rome in 2019 and is often deployed elsewhere on major stories. He has reported for the BBC from over 40 countries.

Education

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Lowen was educated at Sheen Mount Primary School in Richmond upon Thames from which he was awarded a Scholarship in 1994 to King's College School,[1][2] an independent school for boys in Wimbledon, followed by Balliol College at the University of Oxford,[3] where he obtained a First Class degree in History and French.

Life and career

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thumbMark_Lowen_and_BBC_Turkish_team_board_a_flight_to_cover_Turkish_election_campaign,_October_23,_2015
thumbMark_Lowen_and_BBC_Turkish_team_board_a_flight_to_cover_Turkish_election_campaign,_October_23,_2015

Lowen joined the BBC's Paris bureau in 2005 as an intern, becoming a producer, followed by the BBC World Service in London in 2007 and BBC World News in 2008. He became the BBC Balkans correspondent based in Belgrade in 2009, covering the former republics of Yugoslavia and Albania, during which time he reported on the first elections in Kosovo since independence, the trial of Radovan Karadžić, and the arrest of the former Commander-in-Chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladić.

Lowen became BBC Athens correspondent in autumn 2011, replacing Malcolm Brabant, who had become seriously ill following a routine inoculation against yellow fever.[4] He covered Greece's financial crisis before moving to Istanbul in 2014. From there, he reported among other subjects on terror attacks, the attempted coup, the migrant crisis, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Syrian Civil War. In 2019, he became Rome correspondent for the BBC, covering Southern Europe.

He was shortlisted for Young Journalist of the Year at the Royal Television Society awards, 2013.

He is currently a presenter of OS on the BBC World Service. [5]

Family

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Lowen's mother is the British actress Eve Karpf and his grandmother was Natalia Karp, née Weissman (1911-2007), a Jewish refugee from the Nazis and Holocaust survivor, whose story he told in a BBC broadcast and online report.[6] Lowen is married to the Portuguese actor and director of the D. Maria II National Theatre Pedro Penim. In December 2022, Penim announced that he and Lowen had a daughter, born via surrogacy in Canada.[7]

References

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  1. ^ "Schools". The Independent. London. 23 May 1994. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
  2. ^ "O.K.C. Undergraduate Dinner at Balliol College, Oxford". The Old King's Club. Archived from the original on 4 November 2011. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  3. ^ "History". Balliol College, Oxford. 29 August 2009. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
  4. ^ "Mark Lowen". The Foreign Correspondents Network. Global Radio News. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
  5. ^ "BBC World Service - BBC OS". BBC. Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  6. ^ "Last survivors of the Holocaust keep memories alive". BBC News. 27 November 2011. Retrieved 17 December 2012.
  7. ^ "Art Attack's Pedro Benim and his husband have become parents for the first time". BOB FM. 21 December 2022. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
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