Classics Research

Current research in Classics includes the following areas of particular research strength and activity:

• Ancient drama (PANAYOTAKIS, esp. Roman comedy; RUFFELL, esp. Greek tragedy and comedy)
• Egypt (DRAYCOTT, health in Roman Egypt, Cleopatra, Cleopatra Selene; MCDONALD, hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts and texts; MORRISON, Ptolemaic literature and ideology)
• Hellenistic literature (HAU, esp. Hellenistic historiography; MORRISON, esp. Hellenistic poetry)
• Historiography (FOX, Roman historiography, Roman ideas of history; HAU, Hellenistic historiography; MORRISON, Herodotus and his reception in Hellenistic literature; OMISSI, late Roman collective memory, panegyric)
• Late antiquity (MORRISON, 3^rd and 4th century A.D. pagan and Christian epistolography; OMISSI, later Roman empire, 3^rd-5^th centuries A.D.)
• Literature in fragments (HAU, fragments of Hellenistic historians; MORRISON, fragments of Callimachus; PANAYOTAKIS, fragments of Latin drama; STEEL, fragments of the Roman republican orators)
• Politics (ANTONIOU, emperor worship; DRAYCOTT, women, gender and politics; FOX, esp. Roman conceptions of authority, justice; MILI, Greek religion and politics, regional Greek histories; OMISSI, praise of Roman emperors, late Roman imperial power; RUFFELL, politics of Greek tragedy; STEEL, esp. Roman political history & Cicero)
• Religion (ANTONIOU, Roman priests and priesthood; DRAYCOTT, anatomical votives; MCDONALD, Egyptian religion, incl. deities and animal worship; MILI, Greek religion inc. religious belief, dedicatory practices)
• Science/technology/medicine (DRAYCOTT, assistive technology in antiquity; MCDONALD, Egyptian medico-magical practice, esp. texts; RUFFELL, ancient mechanics, Hero of Alexandria)

We also have extensive research links with other areas of the University, including History (esp. with Steven REID), Theology and Religious Studies (esp. with Sean ADAMS), Comparative Literature, Archaeology, and the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. We welcome possible future collaborations, in PhD projects and supervision, and research projects large and small. Please contact andrew.morrison@glasgow.ac.uk in the first instance!

Below you will find some research highlights focusing on the recent or current work of particular colleagues across Classics at Glasgow:

• Angela MCDONALD is a specialist in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts, and deeply interested in the material expressions of both. Currently, her work is focusing on the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus and ancient Egyptian Appeals to the Dead (also known as Letters to the Dead: in conjunction with a new publication McDonald 2024). She also works extensively with the Egyptological collection in The Hunterian in the University of Glasgow. With Andrew Mills, she has published on the museum’s New Kingdom hieratic texts (McDonald and Mills, forthcoming); with Andrew Shortland and Victoria Kemp, on glass beads from Tomb 27 at Gurob (e.g. Kemp, McDonald and Shortland 2017; Kemp, McDonald, Brock and Shortland 2020). She is about to undertake pXRF analysis on three Predynastic human figurines with Dr Louisa Campbell (CHARMS, University of Glasgow). Angela is a co-editor (with Prof Elizabeth Frood, University of Oxford) for a new series published by Bloomsbury: Life-Worlds in Ancient Egypt: A Sourcebook Series.
• Matthew FOX: Central to all my research is the hermeneutic framework explored by Hans Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method. His ideas are central to my approach to antiquity, which interweaves an exploration of the contemporary resonances of ancient ideas while also giving due account of their historical context. I am currently working on a large-scale study of ideas of materialism in Latin literature, which began with a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship in 2014-2017, and which is now nearing completion. This contains detailed examination of a wide range of Latin literature across many genres.
• For many years I have produced small-scale studies in the field of ancient gender studies, from work on visual culture and gender in both Greece and Rome in the 1990s, to more recent work on Roman sexuality and its reception.
• As a consequence of studying the Enlightenment reception of Cicero for Cicero’s Philosophy of History (OUP 2007), I developed an interested in the history of Classical scholarship in the eighteenth century. The most recent result of that was a study of the idea of Latin theoretical texts relating to the interpretation of ancient literature, published as Latin critical theory in the early eighteenth century. In: F. Verhaart and L. Brockliss, L. (eds.) The Latin Language and the Enlightenment Liverpool, 2023).
• In 2022 I attended two conferences in South America, presenting work relating to ancient dialogue and its relevance for promoting conflict resolution. That work is now feeding into the development of teaching materials for 11-14 year olds, part of a collaborative initiative aimed at regenerating the teaching of Classics in Scotland.