Professor Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke has been Professor and Head of Classics at NUI Galway since 2007. The Galway unit has an interdisciplinary focus, reorienting the discipline to embrace Northern European and medieval cultures and languages alongside those of the ancient Mediterranean. His specialist research interests lie in two complementary areas, historical linguistics and ancient and medieval heroic literature. Both are in his first book Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer, where the main text is concerned with the world-picture of early Greek epic poetry and the footnotes try to trace the shifting meanings of words. Since then, his linguistic interests and publications have focussed on semantic change, prototype theory, and lexical reconstruction. His literary work on heroic traditions has led him to a special interest in Middle Irish recreations of Greek mythology and pseudo-history, and he is currently focussing on the unpublished third recension of Togail Troí, the Irish rendering of the Trojan War. He has published a number of chapter-length essays in this area, and is currently working on a monograph study while continuing with primary editorial work on the text itself. He has wider interests in comparative mythology, translation studies, and medieval and modern language and literature.

 

Dr John Curran

Dr Curran studied at QUB and Worcester College, Oxford. He has been a visiting scholar at Worcester College, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and visiting Fellow at St. John’s College Oxford. He serves on the Faculty Board of Theology, The Royal Irish Academy Classical and Near Eastern Studies Committee and the governing council of The Classical Association of Ireland. He is Associate Director of the Institute of Theology, QUB.
He has written widely on Romano-Jewish relations; the religions and society of the ancient Mediterranean and the Christianization of the later Roman Empire. Recent research papers delivered include those at international conferences hosted by The University of Haifa and The University of Cambridge.

Dr. Martine Cuypers

Dr Martine Cuypers is Lecturer in Greek at Trinity College Dublin.
She holds a Ph.D. from Leiden University and has previously worked as a lecturer and research fellow in Hamburg, Leiden, Groningen, Chicago and Washington DC. Her research focuses on epic and the Greek literature and culture of the Hellenistic period and Empire.  Institutional page: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/research/cuypers.php

 

Dr William Desmond

Dr William Desmond received his joint PhD in classics and philosophy from Yale University (2002) and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Ancient Classics, NUI Maynooth*. His research interests focus on ancient philosophy (particularly Platonism and Cynicism) and its social contexts, Greek literature of the Classical period, and aspects of the ancient legacy in modern thought. He has edited several volumes and published two books, Cynics (2008), and The Greek Praise of Poverty (2006), which won the 2008 NUI Centennial Prize in Academic Publishing in Languages, Literature & Linguistics.  http://ancientclassics.nuim.ie/staff/desmond/index.shtml

 

Dr Konstantin Doulamis

Dr Konstantin Doulamis is a Lecturer in Classical culture, languages and literature at University College Cork and Director of the UCC International Summer School of Greek and Latin. His research interests lie in the areas of Graeco-Roman narratives, especially the Greek novels, ancient rhetorical theory, and stylistics, on which he has published articles and delivered talks and research seminars. He holds a Master’s degree in Classical Languages and Literature from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Exeter. He joined the Classics Department at UCC in 2004, having previously taught at Exeter and Sheffield in the UK. He has been Secretary of the Managing Committee of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens since 2007.

 

Dr Christina Haywood

Dr Christina Haywood was born in Athens, Greece but came to the UK to study at third level. She studied Archaeological Conservation at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and has worked as an archaeological conservator in Italy, Greece, the UK and Ireland. In 1976 she graduated with an MA in Archaeology from the University of Edinburgh, and later with a PhD from the University of Liverpool (1991). In 1995 she was appointed Research Curator of the Classical Museum, UCD. In 2006 I was appointed Lecturer in Greek Archaeology, continuing at the same time as Curator of the Classical Museum.  Her research interests are the archaeology of the Mycenaean period and the Greek Early Iron Age. She currently oversees a multi-period interdisciplinary archaeological fieldwork project on the island of Kephalonia, Greece and also co-ordinates a project that explores the context and history of classical antiquities in 18th and 20th century Ireland. She is currently chair of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

 

Dr Edward Herring

Dr Edward Herring is Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He also holds a Senior Lectureship in Classics at the same institution.
He studied for his BA and PhD at Queen Mary, University of London. Prior to moving to Ireland, he worked at both Queen Mary and Royal Holloway in London. In 1988 he helped to found Accordia, which is now recognised as the UK’s premier research institute for the study of early Italy. In 2006, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London. A practising archaeologist, he has worked on excavations and field surveys in Italy and the Western Mediterranean for more than 25 years. He has published extensively on Iron Age and Classical south Italy, and in particular on the relations between the Greek, Roman and native (Italic) populations. This has led him to a wider interest in identity in the ancient world. As well as being one of the editors of Accordia Research Papers, he sits on the editorial board of Classics Ireland. Web: http://www.nuigalway.ie/classics/herring/

Dr Amanda Kelly

Dr. Amanda Kelly currently lectures in NUI Galway on a range of topics from Roman art and architecture, the art of persuasive speech (and script) from Cicero to Isidore, the rise of the polis, Greek festivals and panhellenism. She holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin for research on the Roman Aqueducts and Bathhouses of Crete and has lectured widely on Greek, Roman and early medieval archaeology. She was awarded a Fulbright in 2004 at Harvard University where she was also awarded a teaching distinction. Her research interests include hydraulic architecture (including aqueducts, bathhouses and mills), Roman art and architecture as political propaganda, inscriptional studies and literacy, Greek warfare and engineering, Greek athletics and concepts of beauty. Amanda has directed excavations in Ireland and Jordan and has contributed to work at Cretan sites as a Roman and Late Roman ceramic specialist. Currently, she is the ceramic consultant for the Leukos Survey Project, Karpathos (a collaboration between Queens College, CUNY, Trent University and the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens), where she identifies, and supplies chronologies for, Roman and Late Roman sites. Recently, she has published research targeting Mediterranean trade with Ireland in the Early Medieval period, building on her identification of eastern Mediterranean ceramics discovered in stratified contexts in Ireland in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (in press 2010). 

Dr Dermot Nestor

Dr. Dermot Nestor is a lecturer in the School of Religions & Theology at Trinity College Dublin. His principal research and teaching interests are in the history and archaeology of ancient Palestine, Israelite identity, contemporary sociological and anthropological theory, Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the concept of symbolic violence, visual and material culture, and how the paradigmatic construction of the field of Biblical Studies influences the type of knowledge produced within it. His most recent work, Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity, was published in June of ths year by Contiuum Books. He holds a BA Hons degree from Trinity College Dublin and gained his PhD in 2003. He first joined the School of Religions & Theology in 2004 and has also lectured in St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Dr. Nestor also delivers several modules for the distance education initiative run by the Priory Institute in Tallaght.
 

 

Professor David Scoufield

Professor David Scourfield has been Professor of Classics at NUI Maynooth since 1998. His research interests are broad, and embrace both classical literature and its reception and ancient social and cultural history. He has particular interests in ancient consolatory writing and the literature of late Antiquity, which intersect in his monograph Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60 (Oxford, 1993). A current long-term project, begun with the aid of a Government of Ireland (IRCHSS) Senior Research Fellowship, is a major study of the entire corpus of ancient letters of consolation, in which sociohistorical questions are as much of a concern as more traditional literary and philosophical matters. Other central areas of his work are the ancient novel, especially Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe and Petronius’ Satyrica, and twentieth-century receptions of classical literature and the classical world, with a special focus on the novels and short fiction of E. M. Forster. From 2002 to 2005 Professor Scourfield was editor (with Professor Jonathan Powell of Royal Holloway, University of London) of The Classical Review, and he is currently (2007–12) Chair of Council of the Classical Association, the largest subject organization for Classics in the UK. Further details: http://ancientclassics.nuim.ie/staff/scourfield/index.shtml  

Dr Philip de Souza

Dr Philip de Souza is Head of the School of Classics at University College Dublin, where he mainly teaches Greek and Roman history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a leading authority on ancient warfare and maritime history. He recently held an IRCHSS Senior Research to work on a book on Ancient Naval Warfare. He has a BA in Ancient & Medieval History and an MA in Classics from Royal Holloway College, London. He completed his PhD in Ancient History at University College London in 1992. His previous academic positions were at Leicester University and St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill. His books include Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (1999), Seafaring and Civilization: Maritime Perspectives on World History (2001), The Peloponnesian War (2002) and The Greek and Persian Wars (2003). He has edited The Ancient World at War: a global history (2008) and co-edited (with John France) War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History (2008). His current projects include co-editing (with Bob Hohlfelder and Boris Rankov) the Oxford Handbook of Seafaring in the Classical World.

Dr David Woods

Dr David Woods graduated with a 1st class BA in Greek and Latin from St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, in 1987. He did his postgraduate research at the Queen's University of Belfast under the supervision of Dr. Raymond Davis. He obtained his PhD in 1991 for his thesis ‘The Christianization of the Roman Army in the Fourth Century.’ He then worked outside academia for several years. He taught Latin for a year (1995-96) at St. Patrick's Classical School, Navan, Co. Meath, before obtaining a temporary appointment in the Department of Ancient Classics, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth (1996-98). He has taught in UCC since 1998, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Classics, teaching Latin and Roman history. He was awarded a Research Fellowship from the IRCHSS (2004-05), and has over 100 publications in international peer reviewed journals. His interests include the misrepresentation of the Julio-Claudian emperors, the military and political history of the fourth century AD, the Arab-Byzantine wars of the seventh century AD, and the Latin works of abbot Adomnán of Iona (d. 704).