News & Events


Alexander Meyer spoke with CTV News London about why we need leap years. Read the article here.

Elizabeth Greene won the "Best Poster Award" at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, held from January 4-7, 2024. The poster presented results from a collaborative project with Gillian Taylor (Teesside University, UK), Barbara Birley (The Vindolanda Trust, UK), and Rhiannon Stevens (UCL Archaeology labs, UK) focusing on species analysis of leather objects from Vindolanda, a Roman military fort and settlement in northern England. Results of this research show that the Roman army in northwest Europe may have used goatskin far less often than has been previously assumed, and that the leather assemblage shows almost complete reliance on cowhide by the early third century CE. This work is ongoing and results will be nuanced with further testing using ZooMS (Zooarchaeology Mass Spectrometry) to analyse proteins in the hides. 

Kyle Gervais, Randall Pogorzelski, and Sarah Graham-Shaughnessy (MA 2019, Western) have published a new book, Lucan and Flavian Epic, with Brill.
  
Roman imperial epic is enjoying a moment in the sun in the twenty-first century, as Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus have all been the subject of a remarkable increase in scholarly attention and appreciation. Lucan and Flavian epic characterizes and historicizes that moment, showing how the qualities of the poems and the histories of their receptions have brought about the kind of analysis and attention they are now receiving. Serving both experienced scholars of the poems and students interested in them for the first time, this book offers a new perspective on current and future directions in scholarship.

Bernd Steinbock's course 'Reacting to the Past: Athenian Democracy at a Crossroads' is featured by Western News. Read the article here.
Chris Zekany (as Callias), Olivia Sifrer (as Meletus) and Arianne He (as Aristocles). 
Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications photo

Stephanie Dennie (PhD Candidate) discusses her research on a podcast with Western's GradCast.

Congratulations to James Kenneth and Alexis Andrade for their recognition at the 2023 Global Undergraduate Awards! In the Classical Studies and Archaeology category, James was a Global Winner, and Alexis was Highly Commended. Read the Western News article here. Well done, both of you!

Bernd Steinbock will be hosting this year's annual colloquium of the Ancient Greek History and Political Theory Consortium on September 16-17 at Western.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of longtime department member Professor Charles Leslie Murison. Prof. Murison passed away on August 22, 2023, in his 86th year. He taught continuously in the Department for well over 50 years, from 1963 to 2019, in his subject areas of ancient Greek, Roman, and Hellenistic history, as well as Latin. He was a brilliant man, and his warmth and humour will be much missed. 

Bernd Steinbock presented a paper entitled “Ending Imperialist Wars: Isocrates’ Radical Critique of the Athenian Funeral Ceremony” in the COR/ISHR Rhetorical Get Together Series on Rhetorical Representations of War and Atrocities at Royal Holloway University of London, England, in June 2023 and participated at the International Workshop on Forgetting and Power in Greek and Latin Literature at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany in July with a paper on “Communal Remembrance and Forgetting: The Sicilian Disaster in the Athenian Funeral Oration.”


Congratulations to our 2023 Gold Medal winners are: for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Four-Year Bachelor of Arts (Major) Degree, Kiaan Bondy; for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Three-Year Bachelor of Arts (Major) Degree, Norman Muirhead; for the Honours Specialization in Classical Studies, Cashel Findler; and for the Honours Major in Classical Studies, Natasha George

(from left to right: Norman Muirhead, Kiaan Bondy, Natasha George, and Cashel Findler)


The 2023 Vindolanda Field School has started! A group of Western students, along with faculty members Elizabeth Greene and Alexander Meyer, will spend the next five weeks excavating at the archaeological site of Vindolanda, a military fort and settlement on the Roman frontier in Britain. Follow along on Instagram @instalanda_fs and read the student blog.


Kelly Olson discusses ancient sexual objects with The Atlantic.


Natasha George (Major) has been awarded a Harry C. Maynard scholarship from the Ontario Classical Association. Congratulations, Natasha!


Peter Miller, who received his PhD from the Department of Classical Studies in 2014, has published a new book with Bloomsbury Academic. Sport: Antiquity and Its Legacy examines how sports personalities, agencies, institutions and movements have consciously connected themselves to the Graeco-Roman past, even as they continue to insist on their own centrality in the modern world.


Kelly Olson speaks with CBC's As It Happens about the possibility of a wooden object from Vindolanda being a sex toy. Article.


Kyle Gervais discusses his new book, John of Garland, Integumenta Ovidii: Text, Translation, and Commentary, with Medieval Institute Publications. Watch the video here.


Gwyneth Sutherland (Honours Specialization, Classical Studies; Minor, Latin) was awarded third place in the Classical Association of Canada's 2022 Undergraduate Essay Contest (Senior Level) for her paper "Murex Dye Production on Minoan Colony Islands." In her research paper, Gwyneth effectively uses literary, archaeological, linguistic, and art historical sources to support an original thesis exploring an important industry in the Bronze Age Aegean. Congratulations, Gwyneth!


Maria Glanfield (Classics BA 2020; MA 2023) won the First Runner up for Best Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, held this year in New Orleans, USA, from January 5-8, 2023. Her poster was titled "Applying 3D Structured Light Scanning to Roman Leather Insoles from Vindolanda," a topic which stems from her current thesis research on the application of 3D imaging in Roman archaeology and specifically on leather shoes. Read more on the AIA website.

Congratulations, Maria!

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Elizabeth Greene was featured on Podcast or Perish. You can listen to the podcast here.


Charles Stocking is giving a talk at the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sport at UT Austin, on 'How to Kill an Athlete: Training and the Problem of Health in Ancient and Modern Sport". See the poster here


Bernd Steinbock attended the Midwestern Greek Legal History and Theory Conference at Harvard University and presented a paper on "The Sicilian Expedition as Social Trauma for the Athenians." 


Kelly Olson speaks to Erlend Hedegart (host of podcast 'Well, That Aged Well') on "Would you survive in ancient Rome?". on YouTube


Stephanie Dennie - Blog post part 1 (authored by Kim Solga) and part 2 (authored by Stephanie) on the Activist Classroom blog about interdisciplinary co-teaching and her research as part of the Teaching Fellowship from the Center for Teaching and Learning.


Bernd Steinbock – As a Research Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of Trento, Italy (March 7-27), Dr. Steinbock will teach a doctoral seminar on “Social Memory and Trauma in Ancient Greece” and work on his current research project “Coping with Defeat: The Trauma of the Sicilian Expedition in Athenian Social Memory.” During his research stay he will also deliver two public lectures on the Sicilian expedition as a collective trauma and Thucydides’ historiography as a way of working through trauma, respectively. Interview


Alexander Meyer – Guest blog post entitled “Illuminating the Vindolanda Tablets” on LatinNow