School of Classics Research Projects
This interdisciplinary research centre builds upon the research interests of staff in the schools of Classics, Archaeology, History and Politics. It promotes a wide range of international research activities focussed on the origins, nature and consequences of war-related violence from ancient times to the present day. It aims to develop new research projects in partnership with other research institutions in Europe and North America and to attract resources for these projects from external funding bodies. It also serves as a forum for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working on the history of war and interpersonal violence.
Members include:
Ireland and the Classics
Co-directors: Dr Martin Brady and Dr Christina Haywood
This project aims to co-ordinate existing expertise in the School of Classics in order to examine the influence which Greco-Roman antiquity has exerted over Irish literature and culture. (a) Irish Literature and the Classics. Irish literature has a worldwide standing, and owes a significant debt to Classical models. (b) Classical Heritage: Material and Visual Culture. Under this heading, we already have the Classical Collections in Ireland Project described under No. 3 below.
Classical Museum Projects
Co-ordinator: Dr Christina Haywood
The School of Classics has a Classical Museum, which offers opportunities for students to work intensively with ancient artefacts and gain experience in various aspects of museum work. The Curator, Dr Christina Haywood, is co-ordinating a project to gather information and documentation about classical collections and individual antiquities in Ireland. She is also co-ordinator of an interdisciplinary landscape study of the Livatho Valley on Kephalonia, in which student volunteers take part. This project is carried out under the aegis of the Irish School of Hellenic Studies in Athens.
Text and Tradition: Reading the Past in Classical Antiquity
Co-directors: Prof. Andrew Smith and Dr Aude Doody
This project will explore the different interpretative strategies that readers in antiquity adopted towards the canonical texts which they inherited. It initially will focus on three key cultural shifts that necessitated re-evaluations and re-interpretations of ancient texts: the adoption of a Greek literary tradition by Latin authors; new attitudes towards the Greek science in the context of the Roman Empire; the changing interpretation of Platonism in Late Antiquity.
(a) Greek scientific and medical writing (Dr Aude Doody). This will focus in particular on the significance of wider textual culture in antiquity for the ways in which scientific and medical texts were written. A workshop was organized in April 2007, attended by an international working group on ancient scientific and medical texts (previous meetings at St Andrews University and Newnham College, Cambridge);
(b) the reception of epic, particularly Homer and Virgil (Dr Martin Brady);
(c) the Platonic tradition in late antiquity (Prof. Andrew Smith). This strand is conducted in collaboration with the UCD School of Philosophy and the Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, TCD, of which Prof. Smith is the Associate Director, and the Academia Platonica.
