Mark Lowen is a British journalist. He is the

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

Southern Europe Southern Europe is the southern regions of Europe, region of Europe. It is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is essentially marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of Southern Europe include some or all of these countrie ...

correspondent, based in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. He was previously based in Turkey, Greece and Serbia. He moved to Rome in 2019 and is often deployed elsewhere on major stories.

Education

Lowen was educated at Sheen Mount Primary School in

Richmond upon Thames The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames () in southwest London forms part of Outer London and is the only London borough on both sides of the River Thames. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under the London ...

from which he was awarded a Scholarship in 1994 to King's College School, an

independent school An independent school is independent in its finances and governance. Also known as private schools, non-governmental, privately funded, or non-state schools, they are not administered by local, state or national governments. In British Eng ...

for boys in

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...

, followed by Balliol College at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, where he obtained a First Class degree in History and French.

Life and career

Lowen joined the BBC's Paris bureau in 2005 as an intern, becoming a producer, followed by the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

in London in 2007 and

BBC World News BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and S ...

in 2008. He became the BBC

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

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 Malcolm J. Brabant (born 1955) is a freelance British journalist. He trained with and worked for the BBC for more than 20 years, reporting from various locations. Described as the "King of the Stringers," Brabant has also worked for UNICEF. Br ...

, who had become seriously ill following a routine inoculation against

yellow fever Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In ...

. He covered Greece's financial crisis before moving to

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

in 2014. From there, he reported among other subjects on terror attacks, the attempted coup, the migrant crisis, the government of

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician serving as the List of presidents of Turkey, 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Lis ...

and the Syrian Civil War.

Family

Lowen's mother is the British actress

Eve Karpf Eve Karpf (born 2 August 1947) is a British actress. Among her roles was the voice of Weed for the 2001 ''Bill and Ben'' reboot. She was a voice of Dennis' mum, Matilda in the 1996 '' Dennis the Menace'' television series, Mrs. Bird in ''The ...

and his grandmother was

Natalia Karp Natalia Karp (née Weissman; 27 February 1911 – 9 July 2007, aged 96) was a Polish concert pianist and Holocaust survivor. Early life Natalia Karp was born in Kraków, Poland, and began learning piano at the age of four. At the age of thir ...

, née Weissman (1911-2007), a Jewish refugee from the Nazis and

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivor, whose story he told in a BBC broadcast and online report. 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.

References

External links

BBC News - Mark Lowen articles
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lowen, Mark Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford BBC newsreaders and journalists English male journalists English television journalists Living people People educated at King's College School, London Year of birth missing (living people) British LGBT journalists