Impact in research and beyond

• Landscape and environment: past and present

  Jason König

  Jason's impact work has two strands. The first builds on his work on the history of mountains in classical antiquity, especially his book The Folds of Olympus, published in 2022. It involves developing a ‘Mountain humanities’ network of researchers and practitioners to explore ways in which arts and humanities can make a distinctive contribution to mountain studies. It also involves further work on mountain heritage, especially in Greece, but also in the wider Mediterranean and beyond: for example aiming to bring a new dimension to the experience of mountain tourism by making historical, mythical and archaeological material more accessible. The second strand, which is closely linked with the work of others within the School’s Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies explores ways of using the history and representation of human-environment relations in antiquity as a resource for responses to the environmental crises we face in present, (view one recent event). Both strands include plans for podcast series.

• Visualising war and peace

  Alice König

  Visualising War and Peace is an interdisciplinary research project that analyses habits of imagining, representing and approaching conflict and its aftermath, from antiquity to the present day. It looks particularly at the world-building nature of narratives, in many different media, and the ongoing ‘feedback loop’ between narrative and reality; i.e. the tendency of war- and peace-storytelling not only to reflect reality but also to shape it, by influencing how we think, feel and behave. Drawing on this research, Alice König has developed a range of impact projects that engage with multiple stakeholders, including British armed forces, visual artists, photojournalists, theatre-makers and museum curators. The Visualising War and Peace podcast has listeners in over 85 countries, and the project’s virtual Museum of Peace is used in peace education in a range of contexts. With funding from Imperial War Museums, Alice commissioned a new art exhibition by Diana Forster – entitled ‘Somewhere to Stay’ – to explore habits of visualising forced displacement, as one legacy of conflict; and she has also collaborated with award-winning photographer Hugh Kinsella Cunningham to curate a virtual and in-person exhibition called ‘Picturing Peace in the DRC’. Most recently, Alice has been collaborating with the NGO Never Such Innocence to research the barriers to and develop arts-based mechanisms for better including children and young people in conversations on conflict.

• Ancient environmental studies, sustainability, and pedagogy

  Andrea Brock

  Andrea is leading an impact project on the application of environmental history in response to the climate emergency. The project is fundamentally cross-disciplinary and collaborative, involving contributions from students and scholars associated with the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies. Among other things, the team is working to produce a suite of environmental history curriculum and learning resources for the Gala platform, particularly geared towards sustainability classrooms in secondary and higher education. Currently in development is an open-access, multi-media Library of Environmental History Case Studies. We welcome inquiries from teachers of sustainability as well as students and scholars of paleoenvironmental studies, who are interested to be involved and/or contribute a case study.”

• Marginalised experiences and new audiences: embodied travel and collecting

  Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis

  Alexia researches on travel and classical material culture, especially intimate, small-scale encounters with objects, both in antiquity and modernity (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). She focuses on the experiences of people marginalised through illness, gender, age and social status. Her publications champion a more inclusive understanding of the classical world and its receptions, foregrounding diversity. This work is mirrored by her initiatives which aim to reach new and diverse audiences beyond the academy.

  There are three strands to her impact work. 

  1. The Ithaca project, a collaboration with choreographer Fleur Darkin and performer Francesco Ferrari drawing on Alexia’s research on embodied experience and ancient travel. It engages with diverse audiences in Scotland and Greece through workshop performances and public walks, and will culminate in a short film and a full length dance performance to be premiered in summer 2025. 
  2. Alexia’s research into the role of travel, diverse Ottoman communities and embodiment in the discovery, collecting and removal of the Bassae sculptures to London is ongoing. She is in conversation with curators at the British Museum, feeding into the planned redisplay of these antiquities with a ten-year horizon. This case study will offer a model for the accessible display of contested collections, playing a part in shaping the discourse around repatriation. 
  3. The Inclusive Classics Initiative, which she co-founded, offers a safe space for conversations to develop Classics into a more inclusive discipline. It runs yearly events, disseminating research and best practice to a large international audience including to other sectors, particularly school teachers and museum practitioners.

• Tragedy Embodied: The Greek Tragic Chorus in Modern Performance

  Michael Carroll

  Michael’s impact work is based on his research on the relationship between metaphor and embodied experience in Greek tragedy, particularly as enacted through the singing and dancing of the tragic chorus. Since 2020 he has worked as an academic consultant for Glasgow-based theatre company Company of Wolves, and the first result of this collaboration was a one-person adaptation of Euripides’ Bacchae (written and performed by Ewan Downie) which was performed in Banchory and St Andrews in autumn 2023 and is set to be revived in the near future. In the light of their experience of working together, Michael and Ewan co-devised a workshop on the tragic chorus that was trialled on master’s students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and, in May 2024, on on eight professional theatre makers and creative artists in Glasgow in a week-long ‘labs’ programme .

  The next stage of this collaboration is a multi-year project based on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The ultimate goal is to devise a full-cast version of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon that will bring that play’s famous choruses to life with the help of music and movement, and the first stage – a research and development project on the choruses of Agamemnon (2024-25) – has received substantial funding from Creative Scotland.

  Michael has plans for a website that will contain information on specific tragic choral odes in as accessible a form as possible (with information on the rhythms and imagery along with broader information on the performance context). He is also starting to explore intersections between his research on Greek choral poetry and the complex rhythms and sound patterns of Gaelic music and song.