Classics is a close-knit Department offering a range of sub-disciplines, approaches, methodologies, and periods. We are distinctive in our ambitious coverage of our subject, spanning literature, history, archaeology, and reception. In addition to subject coverage, our core strengths include oratory, law and rhetoric (with a focus on Greek), theoretically-driven approaches to Classical literature, digital archaeology, and Classical reception. Some of this activity is centered in the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric (COR) and the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome (CRGR). We pride ourselves on socially engaged research which speaks to the modern world. Classics is both part of contemporary culture and offers a critical distance from which we can reflect on and productively engage with current global challenges.
In addition to and overlapping with the work of our research centres (COR and CRGR), we group our Engaged Classics into three main themes:
Contemporary Classics
This theme focuses on the political from the politics of the body to global politics and covers work in areas such as gender and feminism; postcolonialism; law and advocacy; empowerment and voice; social engagement and pedagogy.
Spaces and Materials of Belonging
This theme focuses on the materiality and representation of objects and spaces and how those objects and spaces affected everyday lives. Research ranges from the archaeological reconstruction of houses, temples, and urban landscapes, through the meaning of objects, the effects of displacement, economics, to literary engagements with and representations of the spatial.
The Fantastic
This theme explores stories - how they were made, remade, and reimagined from antiquity to the contemporary era. Classical narratives engage with subjects which vary from the sublime to the comic and across genres from epic to the philosophical, set in worlds that range from the socio-realistic to the mythic and everything in between. The theme explores literature itself and how our humanity is explored in literature.
Research by Disciplinary Areas
Our researchers work within their disciplinary sub-areas of archaeology, Greek and Roman history, and literature.
Activities, Engagement and Impact
Our research engages. We work in partnership with colleagues and organisations through numerous events, conferences, seminars, and workshops. These normally international events drive forward our collaborative research, developing new ideas and methodologies often across disciplinary boundaries. Our research also has impact beyond the academy in schools, cultural institutions, and communities across the globe.
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity is a central element of our research work, whether interpreted conservatively (links between literature and philosophy and history; archaeology and history), in new science-arts crossovers (Lowe, Kremmydas), or theory and Classics (Alston, Spentzou). Science-led methodologies are deployed by Jari Pakkanen in architectural reconstruction, recording and quantification and Erica Rowan’s studies of archaeobotanical remains. Zena Kamash is working with psychologists to investigate well-being and heritage in contemporary Iraq.
We work closely with colleagues in other Departments. With History, projects in the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric run with the Centre for Holocaust Studies. The Roman and Byzantine historians in History work with those in Classics through the Roman History Forum; we have shared interests notably in gender history and the history of domesticity and have been co-operating in hosting seminar series and other events. With English, we have shared interests in literary theory and Classical reception and our projects in gender literature in particular cross over all areas in the School of Humanities. From Philosophy, John Sellars works with Liz Gloyn on stoicism, hosting conferences and seminars on later Stoic thinker. Classics is a 'hub' subject in which the multiple disciplinary engagements within the Department intersect with the interests and skills of colleagues within Humanities and across the intellectual and disciplinary range of the institution.
