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 →
Blog
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 →
It’s all Greek to Anna
It's All Greek to Me is a brand new blog by my colleague Anna Judson. Anna is an expert on Linear B, linguistics and Greek in general, so I know that lots of readers will be interested in her site. Anna has long been a major contributor to the Res Gerendae graduate student Classics blog, but... Continue Reading →
Sicily – Culture, Conquest and Battering Rams
Last week I enjoyed a nice afternoon off, checking out the British Museum's "Sicily: Culture and Conquest". I highly recommend it - the displays are fascinating, though somewhat crowded (as always). The exhibition focusses mainly on the Greek and Norman periods of Sicilian history, so go with that in mind if you're expecting lots of... Continue Reading →
Laurence Seminar 2016: Migration, Mobility and Language Contact
On the 27th and 28th May, the E Caucus and the Greek in Italy project are hosting the Laurence Seminar 2016, a yearly conference at the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. This year, our theme is Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in Italy and the Western Mediterranean. Over the past decade, language contact has become a key... Continue Reading →
Venetic seminar week 2
This week at the Faculty of Classics, we held the second Venetic seminar (summed up by one attendee as "Close Encounters of the Venetic Kind"). We tackled a few more of the shorter inscriptions as a warm up, including one of the dedicatory styluses from Este - you can see a selection of these in... Continue Reading →
CIRN Symposium: Death in Italy
On Friday 20th May, I'll be speaking at the Cambridge Italian Research Network's Annual Symposium. My talk is called "Commemorating the dead while becoming 'Romans': Italian funerary monuments in the 2nd-century BC", and I'll be speaking about Venetic and Oscan funerary monuments. As I'm the first chronologically, I'm up first! Many thanks to CIRN and Hannah... Continue Reading →
