This week has been very difficult and sad for many of us. Even writing that feels like a ridiculous understatement, but I don't know what else to say. Those of us working and studying at UK universities are worried (among many many other worries) about our colleagues and our students from outside the UK, and... Continue Reading →
Ancient languages and John Wilkins’s Real Character
I mentioned that at Geoff Fest last week I gave a paper on the "reception" of Oscan - mainly consisting of mentions of Oscan in slightly unexpected contexts from the sixteenth century onwards. One of those instances was in An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, written by John Wilkins in 1668. Wilkins was a... Continue Reading →
Geoff Fest
This weekend we celebrated the retirement of our Professor of Comparative Philology, Geoff Horrocks. I've worked with Geoff for a number of years, during which he's been my second PhD supervisor and a co-investigator on the Greek in Italy project. As the speeches at last night's dinner attested, everyone has their favourite memories of Geoff's... Continue Reading →
Exchange in the Mediterranean
The new book Échanger en Méditerranée: Acteurs, pratiques et normes dans les mondes anciens turned up in my pigeon hole this week - and I'm thrilled to see it in physical form at last! I was also sent some beautifully produced physical off-prints of my chapter - I haven't seen one of them in ages, and they look... Continue Reading →
Happy first birthday, blog! What I’ve learned so far
Amazingly, it is now a year since I started this blog in its current form. I had a website previously, which was mainly just for sharing teaching materials, but on 2nd June 2015 I revamped this site and wrote my first research-driven blog posts. This year has been busy in general, and has flown by... Continue Reading →