Professor Andrew Morrison
- MacDowell Chair in Greek (Classics)
email:
Andrew.Morrison@glasgow.ac.uk
Classics, School of Humanities, Room 511 65 Oakfield Ave, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4961-6768Biography
I joined the University of Glasgow in January 2023. Before that I taught at the University of Manchester for over twenty-one years (and before that I was a graduate student at University College London, and before that an undergraduate at The Queen's College, Oxford).
I have now (as of August 2024) taken over as Head of Classics.
I am a Latin American, born in Panamá to a Mexican mother and an English father. I went to school just outside Panama City and then in Chester (two very different places).
My grandparents were from four different countries (one was a Glaswegian born in Maryhill); I was born in a fifth. I am strongly of the belief that Classics should be as international and diverse as possible: I am happy to talk to students from any background, esp. those from historically under-represented groups, nations or communities, who are interested in Classics at university at any level: email me! (Si les conviene me pueden escribir en español.)
Research interests
My research interests include Hellenistic poetry (esp. the 'big three', i.e. Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes); Pindar and Greek lyric more generally; Archaic elegy and iambos; Homer, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns; Herodotus; ancient epistolography (both Greek and Latin)
I've written two books about Hellenistic poetry: The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2007; paperback 2011) and Apollonius Rhodius, Herodotus and Historiography (Cambridge, 2020; paperback 2023). The first explores how the Hellenistic poets make use of earlier poets, esp. in the construction of their 'voices', while the latter examines how Apollonius receives Herodotus and historiography more broadly in his epic Argonautica.
I've also written a book about Pindar's victory odes, Performances and Audiences in Pindar's Sicilian Victory Odes (London, 2007), and edited collections on ancient epistolography (Ancient Letters, Oxford, 2007, with Ruth Morello) and Lucretius (Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science, Oxford, 2013, with Daryn Lehoux and Alison Sharrock).
My main current research projects are a commentary on Callimachus (for the Cambridge 'Green and Yellow' series) and co-directing the AHRC Ancient Letter Collections project (until 2024), with Roy Gibson (University of Durham).
I also maintain a (now largely amateur) interest in philosophy, both ancient (esp. ancient scepticism) and modern (esp. the later philosophy of Wittengstein). In what seems now like a previous life I won the Henry Wilde Prize in Philosophy as an undergraduate, and I am still grateful for the grounding in analysis and criticism philosophy gave me.
Supervision
PhD students:
Aaron Pocock, 'Hatred and its Antecedents: The Weaponisation of Archaic to Classical Sparta in 21st Century American Far-Right Politics', UofG James McCune Smith Scholarship
MRes/MPhil/MLitt students:
Teaching
24-25:
Greek 1A and 1B (Basic Greek)
Classical Civilisation 1A (lectures on Homer, etc.; seminar groups)
Classical Civilisation 2A (lectures on Thucydides, Plato)
23-24:
Greek 1A and 1B (Basic Greek)
Greek Letters and Letter-Writers: Friendship, Philosophy, Forgery (Hons/PGT course)
Greek Unseens
Classical Civilisation 1A (lectures on Homer, Hesiod, Lyric; seminar group)
Classical Civilisation 2A (seminar group)