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.