This summer, I was finally able to return to Italy for the first time since 2019. It was, of course, fantastic to be back and soaking up the atmosphere again. It was also the last funded research trip of my AHRC fellowship, and I wanted to make the most of it by visiting some lesser-known... Continue Reading →
New module – the History of Writing in the Ancient Mediterranean
Developing and teaching new modules is probably one of my favourite parts of my job. It doesn't come around very often, and it's hugely fun to think about presenting cutting-edge research to undergraduates, who are so open to new ideas and take them to pieces very effectively. So I was very excited to be asked,... Continue Reading →
Digital and practical epigraphy – but hybrid
This past week, I ran another digital and practical epigraphy workshop with Dr Gabriel Bodard and Dr Irene Vagionakis. There was one big difference between this workshop and the one we ran back in 2019: this time, we decided to run the workshop in hybrid format, to allow for both in-person and remote participation. To... Continue Reading →
Italy Before Rome out this week
I'm very pleased to say that my new sourcebook, Italy Before Rome, is out on Friday. If you want to use the discount code below, which is valid until the end of 2021, then you can order direct from the publisher on this link: https://routledge.pub/ItalyBeforeRome So you can get an idea of what the book... Continue Reading →
Digital Italy Part 2
On Tuesday, we held the second half of the Digital Italy seminar. Like last time, I wanted to post a links round-up so that people can find these great projects and resources and see how they develop over the coming years. Luca Rigobianco (Venice) - Building a digital corpus and a computational lexicon of the... Continue Reading →
Digital Italy seminar
We are pleased to announce two seminars on the theme of ‘Digital Italy’, to be held online on Tuesday 7th September and Tuesday 14th September (afternoon only, UK time; exact times TBC). These seminars are being held as part of the events funded by the project 'Connectivity and Competition: Multilingualism in Ancient Italy 800-200 BC'... Continue Reading →
Fake or fortune?
Last week, as I was writing a chapter on alphabets and writing in ancient Italy, I asked the people of Twitter whether they thought the Praenestine fibula was fake or real. The results were intriguing (although most people, understandably, hadn't heard of it). https://twitter.com/Katherine_McDon/status/1310874027901284352?s=20 Most of the people who had heard of it thought that... Continue Reading →
Digital and practical epigraphy
It's been an extremely busy April on the 'Connectivity and Competition' project. After an intense two-week research trip (blog post forthcoming), there was the Workshop on Digital and Practical Epigraphy at the ICS in London, co-led by Dr Gabriel Bodard, which took place from 29th April - 4th May 2019. The concept of the workshop... Continue Reading →
Digital and practical epigraphy workshop
Now that we're well into 2019, some of the events connected to my AHRC fellowship are beginning to take shape. The first of these is the Workshop on Digital and Practical Epigraphy taking place 29th April - 4th May, and generously co-hosted by Gabriel Bodard and the ICS. The aim of this workshop is to... Continue Reading →
What links a drinking cup, Julius Caesar and ancient multilingualism?
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 →
Katherine McDonald 