Funded MA studentships in Classical Studies at the Open University

Thanks to the generosity of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, we are delighted to offer three fully-funded studentships for UK students to study our MA in Classical Studies, with a start date of September 2026. These are open to candidates who meet one or both of the following criteria:

Teachers working in state-funded schools or sixth form colleges in the UK, and who intend to introduce or develop the provision of classical subjects in their school
Students from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background

Please see below for details and get in touch with us if you have any questions.

The Open University’s MA in Classical Studies

This is the ideal qualification for anyone who wants to know more about the ancient world and the ways in which we can approach it as researchers. It also offers an excellent starting point for those wishing to teach classical subjects in secondary school. It is a two-year qualification requiring approximately 25 hours of study time a week, which means that it can be completed alongside employment, and it is taught entirely online.

No specific prior knowledge is assumed, and there is no requirement to have studied Latin or Ancient Greek, but an undergraduate degree in a cognate discipline, and/or some prior knowledge of the ancient world gained through formal or informal study is recommended. By consultation other arrangements can sometimes be made if you do not hold a degree in such a discipline. This usually involves preparatory reading.

Further information about the MA is available on the OU website: https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f59.

The Leventis studentships

The Leventis studentships consist of a grant of £9,000 to cover the full cost of the tuition fees for the MA with the remaining balance available to assist with the following:

purchases of books or resources, or attendance at events relating to the study of the MA
(in the case of the schoolteacher studentship holders) the acquisition of resources, including books, for teaching classical subjects in the studentship holder’s school

How to apply

To apply for a studentship, please complete the MA studentships application form and send it to [email protected] by 4pm on Monday 1 June 2026.

With the form you should also send:

a separate curriculum vitae (CV) of no more than two pages;
a copy of your latest degree certificate and/or transcript of results achieved to date if you have not yet received your degree;
(if you are applying as a schoolteacher) a statement from your headteacher indicating that they are willing to support your plans to the provision of classical subjects. (This need be no more than one side of A4.)

The studentships will not be awarded to students receiving full funding from other funding bodies.

It is not necessary to register for the MA degree before making this application.

Please note that in the award of the schoolteacher studentships, preference will be given to:

teachers (broadly defined) working in schools with a high proportion of students from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background and/or where a high percentage of pupils are eligible for Free School Meals/Pupil Premium;
individuals from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background or from a working-class background.

The Open University promotes diversity in education and we welcome applications from all sections of the community. If it would help to have the application in an alternative format, please contact: [email protected].

The deadline for applications is 4pm on Monday 1 June 2026 and we intend to inform all applicants of the outcome of their application by the end of June.

Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Steph Holton ([email protected]).

Department of Classical Studies wins prestigious outreach award

The Department of Classical Studies at the Open University has just been announced as the winner of the inaugural Dr Stephanie West University Outreach Award. The prize, conferred by Classics for All, recognises the department’s success in developing accessible and innovative ways for learners to study the ancient world. The charity singled out for particular praise the OU’s free online courses, as well as its bursary schemes which fund teachers to gain formal qualifications in Classical Studies.

Prof James Robson comments, ‘It’s such an honour to receive this award –especially for the Open University to be its first-ever recipient – and I’m delighted that the team’s efforts and creativity have been recognized in this way. As someone who had no exposure to ancient Greece and Rome at school and who only got hooked later in life, I’m particularly conscious of the importance of creating meaningful opportunities for people to explore their interests in the ancient world. One of the ways we’ve done this at the Open University is by producing free online courses which allow learners with no prior knowledge to get a taste of topics that appeal to them. I’m especially proud of our HeadStart Classical Studies series of short courses: these were written with 16-18-year-olds in mind, but they’ve ended up attracting learners of all ages. An astonishing 200,000 individuals have visited the HeadStart webpages since they were launched in November 2023. That’s an amazing reach and it just goes to show how attractive topics like Homer, Greek religion and the Emperor Augustus can be when they’re given a contemporary twist and presented in an engaging way.’

He continues, ‘A particular interest of mine is providing access to the study of Latin and Greek, since these languages are taught in only a tiny minority of UK schools. Incredibly, our free Getting Started in Classical Latin course has had over a million visits since its launch in 2015, and Getting Started in Ancient Greek has been similarly successful, clocking up nearly 500,000 visits since 2021. The story isn’t just about these large numbers, though, it’s also about individuals being able to satisfy their intellectual curiosity and become part of the Classical Studies community. The combination of academics’ subject expertise and the tech know-how of our media developers has resulted in an amazing set of interactive learning resources. I’m so proud to be working for a university that supports these initiatives and where ambitious ideas like ours can become reality.’

In addition to online courses, since 2017 the Department of Classical Studies – with the financial support of the A. G. Leventis Foundation – has provided 20 fully-funded MA studentships to state-school teachers, and a further eight internally-funded EDI studentships for teachers to study OU undergraduate modules.

Dr Emma Bridges emphasises the importance of these in supporting teachers to develop their subject knowledge in order to enhance the provision of classical subjects in non-fee-paying schools. She notes, ‘Historically it has been difficult, if not impossible, for pupils in schools in the state sector to study the history, culture and languages of the ancient world. The Open University Classical Studies team sees it as part of our mission to do what we can to change that. Often schoolteachers who are delivering these subjects are primarily specialists in a different academic discipline, so it’s really empowering for them to gain a Classical Studies qualification. Teachers in receipt of our bursaries have told us how transformative the Open University study experience has been, not only in terms of deepening their knowledge but also in enabling them to advocate more confidently for the value of access to Classical Studies.’

Dr. Bridges adds, ‘As with many things at the Open University, the outreach work we do looks quite different from that in other universities. One of our unique strengths is the ability to connect with learners wherever and whoever they are, and it’s wonderful that Classics for All has recognised the efforts we make to maximise the reach and appeal of our distance learning model. We love nothing more than hearing that someone with no previous experience of Classical Studies has found one of our resources and has become as enthused as we are for the subject matter!’

OpenLearn resources

HeadStart Classical Studies

Getting Started on Classical Latin

Getting Started on Ancient Greek

Inheriting, reliving, and reviving an epic

Over the last few years, we’ve been publishing a series of letters from one of our Classical Studies PhD graduates, Paul Jackson, who now lives in Provence. In this latest instalment, Paul shares some exciting news about his new translation of Alexandre Dumas’ epic novel Isaac Laquedem – congratulations on the publication of Volume I, Paul! We love keeping in touch with our graduates, and would welcome other letters like this from our OU Classical Studies alumni. You can email us on [email protected]

“Of the hundreds of writers and artists who have adapted the legend of the Wandering Jew, Alexandre Dumas is among the most well-known and beloved. And yet, his Isaac Laquedem is not well known among Anglophone readers or much included in voluminous scholarship on the Wandering Jew legend. Paul Jackson’s wonderful new translation is sure to change this” (Professor Lisa R. Lampert-Weissig).

In 1852, Alexandre Dumas claimed that he had been working on his epic novel Isaac Laquedem for some twenty-five years. However, as it was being published en feuilleton, it soon fell subject to a great deal of controversy, and Dumas, stubbornly refusing to make any changes to his material, was then forced to abandon the work, and upon his death some years later, it remained unfinished—though what remains is of considerable length in itself. The novel subsequently fell into relative obscurity, and for over one hundred and sixty-three years, unlike many of Dumas’s works, it never enjoyed translation into English for an audience that continues to love the French author so very much. This is all the more remarkable because Dumas himself refers to Isaac Laquedem—and not The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, both of which he had published a number of years earlier—as the “capital work of [his] life”, and unlike The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, it was written all in his own hand, and so represents pure Dumas.

This peculiarity has now been rectified, however, as Isaac Laquedem: A Tale of the Wandering Jew is the first edition in my new Classical Dumas Series, a project that endeavours to produce English translations of some of Dumas’s more obscure works set in or about the ancient world—of which there are many—in the hope of revealing a perhaps rather underappreciated aspect of the writer, the passionate lover of the classical world, a passion that has been the focus of several papers and articles I have produced in recent years, and indeed a post or two here as well.

However, my own project has itself experienced something of an epic too, and one not so dissimilar to Dumas’s decades of writing Isaac Laquedem, the adventures across the world therein that the eponymous Wandering Jew experiences, and the journey through time that the book has taken from then until now. For, coming out of my PhD with the Open University, which was supervised by professors Sophie Grace Chappell and Naoko Yamagata, with my topic bridging both philosophy and classics respectively, I almost immediately emigrated to France and took up this project, something that I had of course had to set to one side until my thesis had been completed. The project was then taken up relatively quickly by a literary agent in London and a publishing house in the United States, and things progressed rather nicely for a number of years, until, that is, challenges began to present themselves, challenges that ultimately could not be overcome. The arrival of COVID was a big hit, but if that were not enough, the closure of Small Press Distribution (SPD), which had operated for over fifty years until then, was just too much for my publishing house to take, and the project was set aside indefinitely. It would then be taken up by another publishing house in London, who were initially extremely excited about things too, but again, things began to unravel, with life getting ever tougher for the literary world, and so it was that I decided to take the plunge, to do what I had resisted doing for so long, and ‘go it alone’!

So much work had gone into the project, you see, and I had also faced a number of personal challenges too, challenges that I will not go into detail about here but challenges that the project had managed to survive, and I was just so eager to share what had by then remained dormant for one hundred and seventy-three years. And so it was with great pleasure—if not considerable relief—when the first volume of my translation of Isaac Laquedem was published. The other three volumes are being released successively, initially in softback and then also in hardover and ebook versions, before bundles or boxsets arrive towards the end of this year in time for Christmas.

I have many people to thank for helping me get to this point: my agent, literary houses, and editors, who had all put so much time and effort into this project over the years; the avid Dumasian Rick Volpe, who continues to push me to not give up on things; my friend Holly Hill Mangin, who helped me to ‘go it alone’; my friend Kate Collord, who meticulously proofread Isaac Laquedem; Professor Lisa R. Lampert-Weissig, who penned an introduction for it; and many others besides.

But more than anything else, the decision to ‘go it alone’ has allowed me to work more closely with my wife, Cécile Césarini-Jackson. We had originally started out on this epic adventure together all those years back, and it must be said, what with the diligence, organisation, and sacrifice required in such things, how she puts up with me, I will just never know. But now, together, we have accomplished something, something that we had perhaps suspected might never have been, and this has brought us even closer together.

Dumas’s magum opus has become ours!

Acte: A Tale of Greece of Rome will be coming out before the end of the year, and I am presently well on my way with the extremely exciting third edition in the series, which is something that has never seen the light of day even in book format, but before then, enjoy Isaac Laquedem: A Tale of the Wandering Jew, for it has been far too long in coming!

Paul T. M. Jackson

https://paultmjackson.com

Funded MA Studentships in Classical Studies at the Open University

Thanks to the generosity of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, we are delighted to offer three fully-funded studentships for UK students to study our MA in Classical Studies. These are open to candidates who meet one or both of the following criteria:

Teachers working in state-funded schools or sixth form colleges in the UK, and who intend to introduce or develop the provision of classical subjects in their school
Students from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background

Please see below for details and get in touch with us if you have any questions.

The Open University’s MA in Classical Studies

The MA in Classical Studies at the Open University provides you with the opportunity to discover what it means to do Classical Studies in the twenty-first century. You’ll investigate a range of ancient and contemporary ideas about the Greek and Roman worlds through encounters with literary texts, languages, classical mythology, historical sources and archaeological remains, and their ongoing significance for later periods, places, cultures and creative practices. By exploring the rich and dynamic scholarly perspectives and resources that are currently available, you’ll address diverse sets of questions about the ancient world. These will enable you to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to produce an independent, extended research project on a topic of your choice. This is the ideal qualification for anyone who wants to know more about the ancient world and the ways in which we can approach it as researchers. It also offers an excellent starting point for those wishing to teach classical subjects in secondary school. It is a two-year qualification requiring approximately 25 hours of study time a week, which means that it can be completed alongside employment, and it is taught entirely online. No specific prior knowledge is assumed, and there is no requirement to have studied Latin or Ancient Greek, but an undergraduate degree in a cognate discipline, and/or some prior knowledge of the ancient world gained through formal or informal study is recommended. By consultation other arrangements can sometimes be made if you do not hold a degree in such a discipline. This usually involves preparatory reading. Further information about the MA is available on the OU website: https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f59.

The Leventis studentships consist of a grant of £9,000 to cover the full cost of the tuition fees for the MA with the balance available to assist with the following:

purchases of books or resources, or attendance at events relating to the study of the MA
(in the case of the schoolteacher studentship holders) the acquisition of resources, including books, for teaching classical subjects in the studentship holder’s school

How to apply

To apply for a studentship, please complete the MA studentships application form and send it to [email protected].

With the form you should also send:

a separate curriculum vitae (CV) of no more than two pages;
a copy of your latest degree certificate and/or transcript of results achieved to date if you have not yet received your degree;
(if you are applying as a schoolteacher) a statement from your headteacher indicating that they are willing to support your plans to the provision of classical subjects. (This need be no more than one side of A4.)

The studentships will not be awarded to students receiving full funding from other funding bodies.

It is not necessary to register for the MA degree before making this application.

Please note that in the award of the schoolteacher studentships, preference will be given to:

teachers (broadly defined) working in schools with a high proportion of students from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background and/or where a high percentage of pupils are eligible for Free School Meals;
individuals from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background or from a working class background.

The deadline for applications is 4pm on Tuesday June 3, 2025 and we intend to inform all applicants of the outcome of their application by late June.

Informal enquiries can be made to Prof James Robson ([email protected]).

My First Foray into the World of Publishing

by Kim Pratt (OU Classical Studies PhD student)

In September 2022 I presented a paper at a Conference on ‘Monsters’ at Reading University, held jointly by Limina Journal and ARC Centre for the History of Emotions at UWA (University of Western Australia) and the Classics Department at the University of Reading, UK. This went well and I was subsequently invited to submit it for a special Conference edition of the Limina Journal which was both unexpected and very exciting. I had based my paper on Chapter One of my thesis, ‘Monsters as the Other: A “Defence” of Polyphemos from Homer’s Odyssey to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’. This chapter covers Homer’s Odyssey and challenges the supposed binaries between the ‘monster’ Polyphemos and the ‘hero’ Odysseus. To submit the paper for publishing some revisions needed to be made including an unexpected and tedious exercise of changing everything to the required Chicago referencing style. This style was unfamiliar to me and took a little while to get used to.

One of my supervisors, Peg Katritzky suggested this would be a good time to choose an author name and to register for an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) as they can both help in the attribution of work. We decided it would be a good idea to include my maiden name (Emmerson), as this would help to distinguish it from other Kim Pratts. So, I became Kim Emmerson Pratt and duly sent off my article in October 2022. At the beginning of December my article was sent back asking for some revisions which, as I told my supervisors was ‘a little deflating to say the least’. I had thought it would just go straight to peer review, the thought of which was already nerve-racking, and some of the editors’ comments seemed rather abrupt and harsh at first. Luckily, my supervisors reassured me it was all quite normal and that the editor was just making sure I had an article more geared to the requirements of the special edition before being submitted for peer review. Indeed, when I asked the editor for clarification on some of the revisions, she couldn’t have been more helpful and friendly, which is how our communication continued throughout the whole publishing process. At the beginning of May I was told my article had been accepted on condition of minor changes based on the reports of two reviewers. When I read the reports, they could not have been more different. While Reviewer One was obviously not a fan, Reviewer Two was very much in favour and luckily the editors agreed with Reviewer Two’s suggestions. Having received good feedback from both Reviewer Two and the editors it was much easier to deal with the very negative comments from Reviewer One and this time I didn’t feel at all disheartened.

The journal had also decided to incorporate a creative writing section on the same theme of monsters. As I have been interested in creative writing since I was a little girl, I decided to submit a poem on the same subject entitled ‘Polyphemos’ Lament’ which I sent off in January 2023. This too was accepted, which was amazing, and I was not asked to revise anything on this until the copyediting stage in September. They just suggested I add an introductory couple of sentences and link it with my article. This was so exciting as I had almost given up of thinking I might one day have a creative piece published and certainly didn’t think it would be while I was still working away on my academic work.

I believe creative writing helps me to see connections and avenues of research where I may not otherwise have done so. When I read the Odyssey I felt sorry for Polyphemos and couldn’t stand Odysseus – I also felt the same about the Creature and Victor in Frankenstein and saw a connection between the two works. This idea grew as I read other works involving Polyphemos such as Theocritus’ Idylls 6 and 11 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I feel that it was my creative side that immediately rearranged the tales of the Cyclops to make one linear story rather than viewing them in chronological order of authorship. Seen that way Polyphemos’ experience is very similar to that of Shelley’s Creature – both begin life as benevolent beings who become malevolent by the treatment and rejection they receive from others because of their monstrous appearance. If I had been writing a fictional piece about Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein, I could just have said she read the ancient works which inspired her in her writing. Of course this cannot happen in academic writing. Although these limitations can be frustrating it led me to search for evidence of a link between the two characters – and I found one! Hidden away in correspondence between Leigh Hunt and Mary Shelley was a little comment in parenthesis in Mary’s letter to Hunt saying, ‘I have written a defence in favour of Polypheme, have I not?’ This became the basis for my thesis and in time my academic work on the ancient works enabled me to write my poem.

On 3 January 2024, I was finally informed that the journal had gone live. The process was long and tedious at times, but it was certainly worth it – I am now a published author in both academic and creative writing! It was such an exciting experience which has really boosted my confidence and gone a little way to dispel that imposter syndrome that constantly lurks at the back of my mind. The numerous revisions and condensing a whole overlong chapter into a shorter article have also helped with the writing of my thesis by focussing on the important details. Also, having one poem published makes me feel there is no reason why it should be my last and my creative writing career may have only just begun!

Please click here for Kim’s profile page, and here for the special edition of Limina.

EDI Scholarships in Classical Studies for UK Schoolteachers

We are delighted to be able to offer three fully-funded EDI scholarships for teachers in UK state schools wishing to study either of the following Open University modules:

A229 Exploring the Classical World
A276 Classical Latin: The Language of Ancient Rome

These scholarships, funded by the OU’s Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, will be awarded to UK schoolteachers who intend to introduce or develop the provision of Classical Civilisation or Latin in the curriculum of the non-fee-paying school or college where they work.  They are open to teachers of any discipline and at any level (primary, secondary or tertiary) looking to develop their knowledge of the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome and/or Latin language and Roman culture with this aim in mind.

In the award of these scholarships, preference will be given to:

teachers (broadly defined) working in schools with a high proportion of students from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background and/or where a high percentage of pupils are eligible for Free School Meals;
individuals from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the teaching of classical subjects, e.g. those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background (including people with a mixed ethnic background) or from a working class background.

These scholarships are open to those teaching in non-fee-paying primary and secondary schools as well as sixth form colleges. Please note that applicants will normally be expected to have worked for at least two years as a teacher.

Studying with the Open University

A229 Exploring the Classical World and A276 Classical Latin: The Language of Ancient Rome are 60-credit modules, requiring regular study each week.  Students are supported by a dedicated tutor, enjoy access to regular tutorials, and study using a combination of printed and online materials. The Open University’s distance learning model gives students the flexibility to study where and when they want.  Modules run from October to May and are assessed via a series of assignments submitted throughout the year.

A229 Exploring the Classical World

This module provides an introduction to the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome. It covers a range of topics such as Homer’s poetry and the society where it was created; Athens in the fifth century BCE; republican Rome; and Roman social history. This module explores ancient poetry, prose, drama and historical texts in English translation along with art, architecture and archaeological evidence to help you build up a solid understanding of key periods of classical history and culture. The material covered provides a strong foundation for the teaching of Classical Civilisation up to GCSE level (or National 4/5 Classical Studies in Scotland).

Further information about Exploring the Classical World is available on the OU website , and on our departmental website.

A276 Classical Latin: The Language of Ancient Rome

This module combines a beginners’ course in Latin with the study of Roman culture and literature in translation. You’ll learn the core principles of the language, while also exploring a range of Latin texts in translation (including Livy, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace) from literary, cultural, and historical angles. The module focuses on the themes of Roman identity, Rome’s origins, and the use of stories from the past in Augustan Rome. The material covered provides a strong foundation for the teaching of Latin up to GCSE level (or National 4/5 in Scotland).

Further information about Classical Latin: The Language of Ancient Rome is available on the OU website, and on our departmental website.

What’s included in the scholarship

The Open University EDI scholarships consist of a grant of £3,228 to cover the full cost of the tuition fees for the module.

Successful candidates will be provided with support and advice on developing or introducing classical subjects in their school. They will also be asked to provide brief written and/or oral updates on their progress and plans during their studies and to complete a report following their completion of the module.

Developing the teaching of classical subjects in schools

There is good support available for teachers looking to introduce classical subjects into state schools provided by the charity Classics for All. For more details, go to the Classics for All website and click on ‘My school wants classics’.  The ACE project website (Advocating Classics Education) also provides useful advice for those wishing to develop Classical Civilisation (and Ancient History) in their schools.  Charities such as the Roman Society and Hellenic Society can provide grants of up to £500 for classroom resources and books.

Note that your plans to introduce or develop classical subjects in your school need not necessarily mean offering a formally examined course (such as a GCSE).  Your plans might instead involve introducing classical content into other subject areas, teaching classics-related classes or clubs off-timetable or offering Latin as a foreign language at KS2, for example.  Please outline your plans and their expected impact (e.g. in terms of student numbers) in your application.

How to apply

To apply for the scholarship, please complete the EDI-scholarship-application-form-2023  and send it to [email protected]. With the form you should also send:

a separate curriculum vitae (CV) of no more than two pages;
a copy of your degree certificate (or a transcript of your degree that makes clear the level of your academic achievement);
a statement from your headteacher indicating that they are willing to support your plans to introduce or develop Classical Civilisation or Latin in your school or college. (This need be no more than one side of A4.)

The application form includes a section for a short personal statement (of no more than 800 words). You should use this section to outline:

the nature of the school you work in and its student body (where possible, please provide information on the percentage of pupils with English as an Additional Language, Special Educational Needs and Free School Meals, plus a link to the latest Ofsted report);
how you propose to develop the provision of classical subjects in your school;
how the scholarship will facilitate greater access to classics for those from backgrounds which are traditionally under-represented in the field (this may apply either to you as the candidate and/or to your students);
your teaching experience to date;
your need for the qualification.

The successful applicants will be selected on the basis of this statement, their eligibility, and their academic and professional achievements to date, also taking into account the level of support from the school or college.

Stronger applications will normally:

show evidence of clear, well-developed plans;
outline how the knowledge and skills acquired by studying the module will enhance the candidate’s ability to teach classics; and
demonstrate that the candidate’s study of the module will make a meaningful contribution to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in classics education.

The scholarships will not be awarded to students receiving full funding from other funding bodies. It is not necessary to register for OU study before making this application.

The Open University is proud to promote diversity in education and we welcome applications from all sections of the community. If it would help to have the application in an alternative format, please contact:  [email protected]

The deadline for applications is 4pm on July 10, 2023  and we intend to inform all applicants shortly afterwards. (Please note that successful applicants will be required to register for their chosen module by the end of July.)

Informal enquiries about these scholarships can be made to: Prof James Robson ([email protected]).

Trevor Fear

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Dr Trevor Fear on Sunday 26 February 2023.

Trevor was Senior Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Classical Studies. He joined the Open University in 2003, originally working in Region 04, and going on to contribute to many Arts and Humanities and Classical Studies modules in production and presentation as both module team member, module team chair and cluster manager. Trevor will be best known to tens of thousands of former and current Arts and Humanities students as the author of ‘Cleopatra’, the very first unit of their study journey. This unit, written initially for AA100 The Arts Past and Present and subsequently reworked for the successor module A111 Discovering the Arts and Humanities, showcases Trevor’s generosity of knowledge. Encouraging students to investigate the reputation of Cleopatra VII across time and space, from the Roman and Arabic texts of the first century BCE to the twenty-first century CE, and from Egypt to Hollywood, ‘Cleopatra’ is regularly named by Arts and Humanities students as their favourite unit and the one that first made them start thinking differently about the world around them.

Over the last 20 years Trevor recruited and supported the development of over 100 Associate Lecturers in his role as Staff Tutor, and his leadership of ‘The Relaxed Tutorial’ FASSTEST scholarship project continues to open up new forms of tuition support for neurodivergent students. Trevor was also deeply committed to increasing access to Classical Studies in UK state schools and was responsible for the recruitment and support of holders of the A.G. Leventis MA Studentship for teachers who intend to develop the provision of Classical Civilisation in their schools.

Trevor’s research specialisms focused on Roman Love Elegy and Latin poetry, particularly the writings of Catullus, and most recently on Classical Reception Studies. For the last twelve years he has been the editor of the Open Access journal New Voices in Classical Reception Studies, promoting the research of early career researchers and established researchers moving into the area of Classical Reception Studies, as he himself once did. Trevor also supervised a number of PhD students, the most recent of whom successfully passed their viva a few weeks ago.

Trevor was deeply woven into the fabric of the Classical Studies department and will be greatly missed by his department colleagues as well as those within the Arts and Humanities Staff Tutor and Associate Lecturer communities and FASS more broadly. He will be remembered with genuine fondness as an innately kind, supportive, understanding and completely dependable colleague who always had time and words of encouragement for everyone. Our thoughts are with Trevor’s wife Cindy and his sons Chris and Zac.

Aristophanes: Lysistrata – new book by James Robson

This month sees the publication of Aristophanes: Lysistrata by James Robson, Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University. Lysistrata is a comedy from Classical Athens about a fictional sex strike staged by the women of Greece which brings about the end of a bitter war.

In this post, James recalls his first encounter with the play and contemplates the play’s enduring appeal.

My first encounter with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was as a first-year undergraduate as part of a Greek and Roman Drama module, and I can safely say it was love at first sight. We studied tragedy for the first semester, and as exciting and profound as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’ plays were for me at the time, I found myself impatiently waiting for Christmas to be over when all the secrets of Greek comedy would finally be revealed to me. The twinkle in my lecturer’s eye whenever he said the name ‘Aristophanes’ was intriguing enough, but it was the rumours I heard from fellow students about Aristophanes’ anarchic, sassy, quick-fire plays with their countless willy, bum and fart jokes that threatened to send me over the edge. Greek Comedy sounded mind-blowing and my mind could hardly wait to be blown.

Book cover showing female dancer in classical gown behind title 'Aristophanes: Lysistrata' Reality hit hard, however, when we finally got to the plays themselves. Greek comedies were like nothing I had ever encountered before, it’s true, but that actually made them tough to read. Plots didn’t always progress logically, and Aristophanes’ stylistic switches and linguistic exuberance could often be difficult to make sense of. Most disappointingly of all – the fantastic willy gags aside – the jokes were often challenging to appreciate, designed as they were for a particular audience, in a particular time and place, and therefore referencing people, events, conventions and objects that were often unfamiliar to me. I desperately wanted to ‘get’ Greek Comedy, but was struggling to find an Aristophanic play to fall in love with. That is, until I found Lysistrata.

So, what is it that made my heart beat faster when I first read this play? You could say that I’ve been working on that question ever since, and that writing this book has finally allowed me to figure out the answer.

To help me explain, it’s worth outlining the context in which Lysistrata was written. It was first staged in 411 BCE during what was perhaps classical Athens’ darkest hour. The city had recently lost thousands of men in the disastrous Sicilian Expedition and was now at serious risk of losing the Peloponnesian War which it had been fighting against Sparta for 20 years. With Lysistrata, Aristophanes presents his audience with a wonderful fantasy of how peace could be attained by the women of Greece staging a sex strike and thereby forcing the men to reconcile their differences and bring the fighting to an end. In his play, Aristophanes freely acknowledges the rough time Athens was having (as mentioned above, comedy as a genre is deeply concerned with the here and now of life in the city of Athens, so this stark reality could hardly be avoided). But importantly, the plot enables him to explore the effects of war from a viewpoint that his predominantly male audience might rarely have considered, namely that of the city’s womenfolk. This makes the play fresh, innovative and arguably more contemporary-feeling for a modern audience inclined to see a non-traditional viewpoint as refreshing. Indeed, Lysistrata was very possibly the first Greek comedy to feature an ordinary, citizen woman as its central character. At this stage in his career Aristophanes was clearly a mature and accomplished playwright who felt confident with experimentation.

The challenging historical backdrop to the play helps us to understand other features of the play that made it more accessible to me as an undergraduate. The intense turmoil in Athens in 411 BCE led to a toxic political situation, which later that year would result in a bloody coup. Wisely, then, Aristophanes dials down the kind of contemporary political jokes and the topical allusions which modern readers struggle with, and instead we get a whole bunch of first-rate willy gags that have stood the test of time. As I just mentioned, too, he also experiments with the genre of comedy: Lysistrata’s characters are more psychologically convincing than the more changeable creations of his earlier plays, their language is more uniform, and the plot – as fantastic and silly as it is at times – nevertheless has its own logical flow. In short, the play’s universal themes – sex, war, gender, protest – its characters, its language and its humour are simply all more comprehensible to a non-specialist than those of other comedies by Aristophanes. And this, I think, is what helped not just the undergraduate version of me fall in love with Lysistrata, but why the play has been so influential in modern times, too. As I outline in the book, Lysistrata has been widely read and performed in English-speaking countries over the last 150 years – perhaps more widely than all the rest of Aristophanes’ plays put together – and has even inspired feature films (Spike Lee’s 2015 Chi-raq is a recent example). In short, Lysistrata has proven to be a deeply seductive play – not just for me, but for many others, too. And writing this book has not only allowed me to explore the nature of its allure, but also to share its seductive secrets with others.

Aristophanes: Lysistrata by James Robson is published by Bloomsbury.

Read more about James’ teaching and research at the Open University here.

Monarchs, Courtiers and Technocrats – Q&A with Dr Martin Dearne

Dr Martin Dearne has been an Associate Lecturer with The Open University for twenty years, and has taught on many of our Classical Studies modules (AA309, A209, A251, A330, A219, A229, A105, A151, A112). He is the author of six books, the most recent of which is an archaeological study of Elsyng Palace in the London Borough of Enfield. In this blog post, Martin tells us more about Monarchs, Courtiers and Technocrats; Elsyng Palace, Enfield: Place and People: The Documentary and Archaeological Evidence for a Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century Courtier’s House and Tudor and Stuart Royal Palace; and for the Lives of its Owners and House

Hello Martin, and congratulations on your new book! Please could you start by introducing our readers to Enfield and its history?

Enfield today is a London borough – at the top centre of Greater London just south of the M25 – made up of two or three distinct Medieval villages in the Lea Valley that expanded into towns and eventually got swallowed up in the urban sprawl of the capital. Enfield itself was the most northerly of them, from the Norman conquest on quite a small market town in what was then rural Middlesex, but dominated by the nearby royal hunting forest of Enfield Chase. It still has a market square opposite where a manor house used to stand, but as the town grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became best known for the industries that grew up east of the original town along the River Lea (the largest tributary of the River Thames) such as that making Lee-Enfield rifles.

Your first book on Enfield (First Stop North of Londinium: The Archaeology of Roman Enfield and its Roadline Settlement) dealt with the ancient history of the town. How did you come to write that book? And what did you discover about Enfield’s Roman past?

Book cover of 'First Stop North of Londinium'. The cover is deep red with orange writing, and shows two ceramic vessels below the title.

I was born in the borough and the first archaeological dig I ever went on was with the local archaeological society on a Roman site here. After many years at Sheffield University when I moved back to Enfield I got involved in that society which was active at the time in excavating a Roman settlement that lay on Ermine Street – the main Roman road north out of Londinium which ran ultimately to York and beyond – but a little at a time in people’s back gardens. Nobody had tried to take all these little pieces of a jigsaw and put them together and the book grew out of the process of doing that. The result was a picture of the first roadside settlement along the road once you left Roman London, a settlement that combined farming with providing for travellers, probably had a mansio (official ‘hotel’) and lay in a wider landscape that may have included a tannery site and a large estate farm.

This new book moves the story forward by looking at a later period of Enfield’s history, and at a particular site – the royal palace of Elsyng. How did you come to that topic?

Yes, that’s right. While I was working on the first book I was asked to direct new excavations on the site of this Tudor and Stuart palace. Some very impressive remains of it had been excavated in the 1960s, but nothing had been done on the site for about 40 years and, as it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, English Heritage required a professional archaeologist to lead the local team who wanted to uncover more of it. And that fairly rapidly became an annual excavation taking in student training, community open days and even a TV documentary. But, as the team (which includes two other current or former OU Associate Lecturers) uncovered more and more of the palace, it became more and more important to publish what we had found and link it to the people who had once lived here. Surprisingly royal palaces like this are in fact a very under explored part of the national story and Elsyng was also the most important element in putting Enfield on the map over about 300 years. So once I finished the book on Roman Enfield I decided that I would try and research its history as well as publish the archaeological work I had led.

Can you introduce us to some of the historical figures you study in the book? Maybe you can tell us which figure interested you the most?

I could tell you about a variety of people who I look at, from an Earl of Worcester in the Wars of the Roses who was called ‘the Butcher of England’ to Elizabeth I who lived at Elsyng at times when she was a girl. But one I got particularly interested in was John Carleton. Before it was a royal palace, Elsyng was held by Sir Thomas Lovell – one of the technocrats who ran early Tudor government. He was very rich, had vast estates all over the country, many governmental positions and was constantly being visited here by Henry VII and VIII. But it was Carleton, his own ‘Receiver General’, who ran Lovell’s private affairs and then organised his lavish funeral when he died in 1524 and had to disentangle his complex financial affairs as his executor. And it is through Carleton’s accounts books with their detailed pay records and tradesmen’s bills that we get an insight into how Elsyng functioned as a ‘courtier’s palace’ with a staff of about a hundred. He is the sort of figure who stands just outside the spotlight of history, but without whom those in the spotlight couldn’t have functioned.

How did you go about researching the book? Was it archival research, archaeological fieldwork, or both?

The site of the furnace of the boiling house at Elsyng. Whole sides of meat were boiled in a large vat set over the furnace.

It was very much both. I reassessed the 1960s excavations and synthesised the 16 years of those I had up to that point directed myself, which in some ways was the easy part. The more difficult was writing the history of the site and the people who lived there because it meant getting into late Medieval and early Modern studies which I didn’t have a background in. Fortunately I had colleagues from the excavations, one of whom took on photographing hundreds of documents in the National Archives and elsewhere and another of whom taught himself to read and transcribe them – because often they were written in things like Tudor secretary hand which at first glance is as hard to read to the uninitiated as cursive Latin. Even then though it meant trawling through and cross referencing vast numbers of printed ‘calendars’ (summary publications) of documents. In fact it is only the fact that so many of these can now be read on line that made this side of the research possible.

Did you find many links between the Roman and later periods of Enfield’s history?

To borrow a phrase, it’s about location, location, location. The Roman settlement in Enfield was here because it was a convenient distance out from Roman London for travellers to break a journey. In the same way the palace was near enough Medieval and Tudor London to easily reach it, but far enough away to escape its plague outbreaks and develop a prestigious house in a large estate. Then where exactly the palace was sited was in part determined by the survival of Ermine Street; in the 1430s, when it was first built, Roman roads like Ermine Street were still the backbone of the road network in Britain.

Which is your own favourite historical spot in the town of Enfield – and why?

Well, it would have to be the site of Elsyng palace, but one specific spot on the site. At that point you can see over 1,600 years of Enfield history in one go. Look in one direction and there is a modern road that follows the line of Ermine Street to an eighteenth century bridge over a brook that stands where a Roman bridge or ford once did. Turn round and across the modern park it edges you can still trace the approach road to the palace that ran off of it. And turn half way back and look uphill and there stands the early seventeenth century Forty Hall, the country home of a Lord Mayor of London (the excavations I have directed around and inside which look dangerously like turning into another publication !)

Thank you Martin, and congratulations again on this new book!

Monarchs, Courtiers and Technocrats is available to buy via the website of Enfield Archaeological Society: https://www.enfarchsoc.org/publications/

Q & A with Dr Gina May

This week we chatted with OU Classicist Gina May about her new book A Student’s Guide to Online Learning published by the Open University Press, which is due to go on sale on 12 August.

Hello Gina! Before we start talking about your book, could you introduce yourself to our readers? How did you get into Classics?

I have been an associate lecturer with the Open University since 2009 and have taught modules at stages 1, 2 and 3 as well as at postgraduate level. Over the years I have also contributed to module content and TMA questions for a variety of Classical Studies modules – it is my dream job! At the same time as teaching for the OU, I also taught in the Classical Studies department at the University of Kent for 10 years but left there 3 years ago to allow time to write and develop my own courses which I teach online as an independent educator. I also do work as a consultant for universities and schools developing online teaching strategies and training staff to teach online.

I first discovered a love of Classics at school because our drama teacher had us reading Greek tragedies and our French teacher had us reading Racine’s versions of the same Greek tragedies, but in French. I also did Latin at school which I loved but did not do any other ancient languages until I went to university as a mature student. Although I had a long gap before starting a degree, I kept reading in the meantime and when my children were in their teens, I did a BA and PhD degree in Classical Studies and loved every single minute! I am a lifelong learner and look enviously at OU modules wishing I could do them all.

What is your daily routine like, in your job as an OU associate lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences?

As associate lecturers we work from home and so I spend most of my days in a summer house at the end of my garden which is great! I teach on 5 modules including A863 and A864 which are the first and second years of the Classical Studies MA. My work includes writing and delivering tutorials, marking TMAs, talking to students via email and on the phone, as well as other general tasks such as monitoring and moderating forums. There is a great feel of camaraderie between the members of the department and although ALs do not go onto the physical campus very often, we still feel very much a part of what goes on and have a great rapport with the central academics.

We are all excited about reading your new book A Student’s Guide to Online Learning! How did you come to write the book?

The book came about because during the pandemic there was such a large shift towards online teaching for both universities and schools. This made me realise that actually, the OU have been doing this really well for years so were well ahead of the game in terms of teaching. However, there was nothing on the market that looked closely at the skills needed for learning online. I started by talking to current and former students asking them what they wished they had known before they started and to tell me about some of the problems they encountered or were encountering along the way. This, combined with the experience of teaching thousands of students both face to face and online, helped to decide on the content.

Who did you write it for? Is your target readership mainly OU students? Who else do you think will benefit from reading the book?

As an AL I had my own students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in mind a lot of the time, but the content works equally well for any student of an online course whether that is as part of a degree or for work as part of continuing professional development. A lot of the issues are the same such as developing the right persona, conversing with tutors and peers and demonstrating employability skills. The use of social media as a tool for learning and networking is something that is new to many students so this is also covered.

Could you give us a sneak preview of the contents? How is the book structured (and was it difficult to decide how to structure it?)

The chapter headings are: Online Identity and Personas; Learning Online Environments; Accessing Learning and Peer Support; Recognising Strengths and Overcoming Difficulties and Disabilities; Academic Integrity and Employability; Researching Online; Digital Technologies for Online Learning; Using Social Media for Learning Online and Trouble Shooting, Staying Safe Online.

To decide on the structure, I thought about the order in which a student might need to know how to do things and went from there. The book can be used by starting from the beginning and working through to the end but works equally well for just dipping in and out of. Each chapter has advice and practical exercises together with quotes from students who have experience of dealing with the particular issue being talked about.

Which chapter was hardest to write, and why?

The hardest chapter to write was ‘Trouble Shooting’. Current and former students sent me lots of examples of things that had happened to them and how they had resolved the issues. I then had to combine these together with my own experience as a tutor and online student into a format that worked well. I wanted to provide clear advice that would be both helpful and reassuring.

Which is your favourite chapter, and why?

I have two favourite chapters. The first is ‘Recognising Strengths and Overcoming Difficulties and Disabilities’. This is because students tend to focus on the negative, the things that they have done ‘wrong’, cannot do because of a difficulty or disability, or do not know how to do. I wanted to turn this completely on its head and look at how to discover what you can do well, how this is being done and how to enhance it going forward. The chapter also deals with practical issues such as how to use assistive technologies such as screen readers and voice activated software. For me, the important thing about this chapter is that it empowers all students.

My other favourite is ‘Researching Online’ simply because I love research. In this chapter I show how to narrow and deepen a search to avoid falling down rabbit holes that might well provide hours of pleasant reading but that may not actually be very useful. I look at using library catalogues and other data bases as well as what does not form academic content and so should be avoided.

The book is written together with Tim Bentley – could you tell us a bit about this collaborative writing process?

My co-author (and husband) is now a paramedic and paramedic educator but is a former learning technologist who developed and implemented online learning platforms at two large UK universities. Using this expertise, he contributed towards the explanation of how technologies work and can be best used in order to learn online, and what to do when things go wrong. Content includes everything from making sure that your internet connection is secure to how to use the tools in FB and Twitter to enhance learning and to become part of the wider learning community in your discipline.

What is your next project after this book?

I am currently working on a number of projects.

The first is a companion book to A Student’s Guide to Online Learning which is aimed at those who teach online. It looks at the practical skills of online and blended teaching as well as how to write or convert material to do so. This combines my experience of many years teaching online with the wealth of experience that current and former students, and colleagues, continue to share with me.

My other current projects include:

A book which takes all the vocabulary used for GCSE, AS and A Level Latin and sets out all the tenses of the verbs and the cases of the nouns in full. This is almost finished and will be on Amazon by the end of the summer. I have not quite decided on a final title for this so any suggestions would be gratefully received!

Academic Practice for Classical and Archaeological Studies which looks at the specific study skills needed in Classical Studies and includes content on using data bases, archaeological reports, coins and standing culture as well as ancient texts. I also look at how to use online dictionaries as a non-linguist and how to work with fragmentary evidence when writing essays and dissertations. As well as all this, the book includes study skills such as critical reading, referencing, structuring written work, constructing an argument and much more.

A novel for Falcon Books Publishing which is about a little girl who gets lost in the crowds at Epidaurus and grows up in the temple there. I was so inspired by the way that Pat Barker wrote Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy that I thought I would have a go myself!

I am on twitter @DrGinaMay and have a website: ginamay.co.uk which has details of all the courses that I teach as an Independent Course Provider outside of my work with the OU.

Congratulations, Gina – we can’t wait to read the book!