UoA 31 Classics

Classics provides an environment in which all staff, individually and in collaboration, internal and external, can produce outstanding research and maintain a strong disciplinary base encompassing all main areas of Classics and Ancient History, in tandem with the ideal of research-led teaching.

Key results

  • 30 per cent of our research was assessed as world-leading (4*).
  • This represents a national ranking of 9 out of 22.
  • 40 per cent of our research impact was assessed as world-leading (4*).

Impact case studies

NameSummary

Promoting health and wellbeing using ancient ideas

This case study describes the impact of the unit’s research on ancient medicine and philosophical approaches to psychological therapy. The main impact achieved has been on informing contemporary public and professional debate about how to promote health and personal wellbeing by highlighting the significance of ancient ideas and practices. A second impact has been a contribution to professional debate about legal ethics by drawing on ancient ideas. These impacts have been achieved by events targeted at specific professional groups, along with broader public engagement through lectures, blogs and videos.

Engaging people in shared reflection and creativity

Professor Elena Isayev has led three projects, drawing on the implications of historical research, in collaboration with art practitioners, to engage young people, minority and disaffected groups in shared reflection and creative activity. These projects, centred on the paradoxical idea of Future Memory, have been used to create alternative spaces in which to re-think attitudes to human mobility, otherness and identity. While promoting new forms of cultural and artistic activity, the projects have also produced social benefit, in enabling large numbers of people, especially young people in deprived communities, to think constructively about their own identity, memories and sense of belonging.

Encouraging discussions about sex using historical objects

The research of Dr Rebecca Langlands into sexual identities, choices and behaviours both ancient and modern has informed a pioneering approach to improving young people’s wellbeing and sexual health. Working with schools, museums and charities, this methodology, which involves showing young people historical ‘erotic’ objects from museum holdings, has had a positive impact on young people’s mental and physical wellbeing, personal identity, social skills, personal resilience, confidence, sexual health and life chances. Its success has attracted further investment, and influenced sex education policy discussion. It has also enhanced the role of regional museums in effecting social change and wellbeing, informed debate on the relationship between the health and cultural sectors, created new economically beneficial partnerships, and shaped museum policy.

Research centres

CentreAbout the Centre
The Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society

A significant proportion of our research is now focused on the area of later Greek and Roman culture. Projects specially linked with the Centre include those on Athenaeus, Galen and Black Sea History.

Centre for Medical History 

The Centre provides a framework for collaboration on the contemporary relevance of ancient medical and psychotherapeutic practice and for an interdisciplinary research project on sexuality and history.

Research projects

ProjectAbout the Project
Black Sea History  Close links have been forged with colleagues in the former Soviet Union and Turkey, resulting in several international conferences and publication projects. Substantial advances in the publication of archaeological and epigraphic evidence about the region are resulting from this research, supported by numerous grants.
The Ancient Bibliocosm  With subprojects on The Ancient Paratext, Greek Tragedy and Quotation, Citation Culture in Antiquity, and Quotation Culture in Early Christian Writers.
Ancient Healthcare and Modern Wellbeing

The project includes features of ancient medicine and psychology such as:
The focus on preventive medicine and life-style management rather than drugs or surgery
and philosophical therapy as a 'preventive medicine' against psychological illness.

This project is supported by the   strand of the University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Strategy (HASS).

Sexual Knowledge and Sexual History

This interdisciplinary, collaborative research project is pioneering a new direction for the history of sexuality, applying the approaches and methodologies of the emerging discipline of Classical Reception to the study of the ways that ideas about sex and sexuality have developed in recent centuries.

Place, Space and Connectivity in the Roman World 

This project includes a closely-related group of subprojects that address issues of space, movement, and economies in the Roman world. With subprojects on Mass consumption before consumerism, Urban labour and the Roman economy and Italy as Migratory Crossroads. 

Ātman and Psyche

This project is a large-scale comparison of the socio-economic bases for intellectual development in Greece and India in the Axial Age.
Democracy and Tyranny An international political-science project on the reception of ancient political thought in the medieval and early modern periods.
Heroes and Leaders This interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars from a range of disciplines in Humanities (including Classics, Philosophy, Theology, History and Modern Languages) and the Social Sciences (including Psychology and Management) to investigate the practices and systems of exemplarity and role modelling in a variety of cultures from antiquity to the present day.

UoA 31 Classics

Classics provides an environment in which all staff, individually and in collaboration, internal and external, can produce outstanding research and maintain a strong disciplinary base encompassing all main areas of Classics and Ancient History, in tandem with the ideal of research-led teaching.

Key results

  • 30 per cent of our research was assessed as world-leading (4*).
  • This represents a national ranking of 9 out of 22.
  • 40 per cent of our research impact was assessed as world-leading (4*).

Impact case studies

NameSummary

Promoting health and wellbeing using ancient ideas

This case study describes the impact of the unit’s research on ancient medicine and philosophical approaches to psychological therapy. The main impact achieved has been on informing contemporary public and professional debate about how to promote health and personal wellbeing by highlighting the significance of ancient ideas and practices. A second impact has been a contribution to professional debate about legal ethics by drawing on ancient ideas. These impacts have been achieved by events targeted at specific professional groups, along with broader public engagement through lectures, blogs and videos.

Engaging people in shared reflection and creativity

Professor Elena Isayev has led three projects, drawing on the implications of historical research, in collaboration with art practitioners, to engage young people, minority and disaffected groups in shared reflection and creative activity. These projects, centred on the paradoxical idea of Future Memory, have been used to create alternative spaces in which to re-think attitudes to human mobility, otherness and identity. While promoting new forms of cultural and artistic activity, the projects have also produced social benefit, in enabling large numbers of people, especially young people in deprived communities, to think constructively about their own identity, memories and sense of belonging.

Encouraging discussions about sex using historical objects

The research of Dr Rebecca Langlands into sexual identities, choices and behaviours both ancient and modern has informed a pioneering approach to improving young people’s wellbeing and sexual health. Working with schools, museums and charities, this methodology, which involves showing young people historical ‘erotic’ objects from museum holdings, has had a positive impact on young people’s mental and physical wellbeing, personal identity, social skills, personal resilience, confidence, sexual health and life chances. Its success has attracted further investment, and influenced sex education policy discussion. It has also enhanced the role of regional museums in effecting social change and wellbeing, informed debate on the relationship between the health and cultural sectors, created new economically beneficial partnerships, and shaped museum policy.

Research centres

CentreAbout the Centre
The Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society

A significant proportion of our research is now focused on the area of later Greek and Roman culture. Projects specially linked with the Centre include those on Athenaeus, Galen and Black Sea History.

Centre for Medical History 

The Centre provides a framework for collaboration on the contemporary relevance of ancient medical and psychotherapeutic practice and for an interdisciplinary research project on sexuality and history.

Research projects

ProjectAbout the Project
Black Sea History  Close links have been forged with colleagues in the former Soviet Union and Turkey, resulting in several international conferences and publication projects. Substantial advances in the publication of archaeological and epigraphic evidence about the region are resulting from this research, supported by numerous grants.
The Ancient Bibliocosm  With subprojects on The Ancient Paratext, Greek Tragedy and Quotation, Citation Culture in Antiquity, and Quotation Culture in Early Christian Writers.
Ancient Healthcare and Modern Wellbeing

The project includes features of ancient medicine and psychology such as:
The focus on preventive medicine and life-style management rather than drugs or surgery
and philosophical therapy as a 'preventive medicine' against psychological illness.

This project is supported by the   strand of the University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Strategy (HASS).

Sexual Knowledge and Sexual History

This interdisciplinary, collaborative research project is pioneering a new direction for the history of sexuality, applying the approaches and methodologies of the emerging discipline of Classical Reception to the study of the ways that ideas about sex and sexuality have developed in recent centuries.

Place, Space and Connectivity in the Roman World 

This project includes a closely-related group of subprojects that address issues of space, movement, and economies in the Roman world. With subprojects on Mass consumption before consumerism, Urban labour and the Roman economy and Italy as Migratory Crossroads. 

Ātman and Psyche

This project is a large-scale comparison of the socio-economic bases for intellectual development in Greece and India in the Axial Age.
Democracy and Tyranny An international political-science project on the reception of ancient political thought in the medieval and early modern periods.
Heroes and Leaders This interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars from a range of disciplines in Humanities (including Classics, Philosophy, Theology, History and Modern Languages) and the Social Sciences (including Psychology and Management) to investigate the practices and systems of exemplarity and role modelling in a variety of cultures from antiquity to the present day.