Classics, Ancient History, Linguistics, Academia and more
It's always nice to receive a new publication in the post! The book Creating Orthographies for Endangered Languages, edited by Mari C. Jones and Damien Mooney, is an edited volume arising in part from Mari's work with the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group and its associated Cambridge Conferences on Language Endangerment. I always enjoy conferences which... Continue Reading →
On the first of September, I celebrated my first anniversary of starting work at the University of Exeter. It's been a great year, and I've learned a lot - but I was also interested to see how I'd spent my time this year. Some of you might know that I track how I spend my... Continue Reading →
Back in March, I asked many of you to fill in a survey for my PCAP essay on casualisation and employment in Classics in the UK. I'm pleased to say that an expanded version of this report has been published by the Council of UK Classics Departments Bulletin. It can be found online here. Please feel... Continue Reading →
This recent post by my 'Greek in Italy' colleague Nick Zair shares the (very exciting!) news that the epigraphy room of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale is open for business again. To give some context to this, I've visited this room about three times. The first time was in 2009, when I was told it was closed... Continue Reading →
Today I've been working on a piece on very short inscriptions - so short that we're not even sure what language they are in. There are some obvious reasons why very short, abbreviated inscriptions are sometimes used. On a coin or a tile stamp, space can be so limited that an abbreviation of the name... Continue Reading →
Fellowship (or associate fellowship) of the Higher Education Authority is now a requirement for many people working in higher education. I've done two applications to the HEA over the past two years - last year, to be accredited as an Associate Fellow through a Cambridge programme called TAP, and then this year to get a... Continue Reading →
First of all - happy second birthday, blog! The blog is now regularly getting 2000 readers a month which - let's be honest - is a lot more people than have read my book in the same period, and that's why I love blogging. It's been great to publish my work in different ways and... Continue Reading →
This week on the CREWS project blog (which has a lovely redesigned website!), PhD student Natalia has written about the various different Greek and Roman myths relating to the creation of the alphabet. The most famous mythical progenitor of the alphabet is perhaps Cadmus, who is often credited with inventing or popularising the Greek alphabet.... Continue Reading →
Sometimes lunchtime conversations in the department are the best way to think about something from a new perspective, because everyone brings such different experience to the same question. This week I had a great conversation with my colleagues Richard Flower and Katharine Earnshaw about the connotations of the Latin word sacerdos. We all started out with... Continue Reading →
Next week, I'm presenting at the conference Parole per gli dei: dediche religiose in lingue epicoriche nel Mediterraneo Occidentale [Words for the gods: religious dedications in epichoric languages in the Western Mediterranean] at the Academia Belgica in Rome. I'm thrilled to be included in this conference which includes such an international range of scholars. Here is my... Continue Reading →
Katherine McDonald 