About The People

Lorna Hardwick (Project Director) is Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University, UK. Her main research has been in Greek Social and Cultural History and the Reception of Classical Texts. (Publications)

As an undergraduate she studied Ancient History with Professor Martin Wight and Greek Tragedy with Professor Gabriel Josipovici and as a research student was a pupil of Professor M. I. Finley. This background fostered an interest in working across disciplines and examining the relationships between ancient and modern politics and culture.

Her teaching with the Open University involves preparation of written teaching texts with video and audio materials for use by large numbers of adult undergraduates in the UK and other European countries. She is also involved in collaborative work to develop national and international training opportunities for research Students. She is convenor of the Classical Reception Studies Network (Collaborative project involving universities in the UK and overseas which have research and teaching specialisms in classical receptions.

Anastasia Bakogianni is currently a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Open University where she is working on a project about the reception of the classics in popular culture (1970 to the present). Previously she worked as a Research Fellow of the Institute of Classical Studies in London. Her interests include Greek Drama and its Reception, particularly Modern Greek Receptions, Women in Antiquity and Classical Mythology.

Alison Burke (Project Research Consultant) studied Classics and Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow and then transferred to Queen Margaret University College Scotland where she completed her PhD thesis entitled Performing the Agamemnon: a spatial analysis of the text and three modern British productions. (Publications)

Deborah Challis (Project Consultant, Classical Historiography) studied at Birmingham University and Goldsmiths, London before completing her PhD thesis (Collecting Classics. The Acquisition and Collection of Classical Antiquities in Museums in England 1830 - 1890) at Birkbeck, London. Debbie works part time at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London, and is author of From the Harpy Tomb to the Wonders of Ephesus. British Archaeologists in the Ottoman Empire 1840 - 1880 (Duckworth: 2008).

Carol Gillespie (Project Officer) has a first degree from the Open University in Humanities with Classical Studies. As Project Officer her role includes overseeing the organisation of conferences and the dissemination of publications which make available the project's research to the wider community. She also has responsibility for the technical aspects of the project including the online database and the project website. She co-convenes the annual E-Seminar and prepares archived ESeminar papers for web publication. She is co-editor of Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds (Oxford, 2007). (Publications)

Edward Hadley studied English literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, and completed a PhD on the poetry of Ted Hughes at Durham University. His first book, The Elegies of Ted Hughes, was published in 2010. He currently tutors a range of courses for the Open University and has previously taught at Durham University and St Anne's College, Oxford, where he tutored courses on Metaphysical Poetry, Shakespeare and the poetry of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.  

Ruth Hazel (Project Research Consultant) studied English Literature at the University of Southampton followed by a Master's Degree in Shakespeare Studies at The Shakespeare Institute, The University of Birmingham.

Ruth has taught courses in literature and drama for many years to undergraduate and mature students, and then moved into Classical Studies in 1993 when she became Research Assistant to the Reception project. This led to an interest in the relationship between modern British Theatre and ancient Greek drama, and to the study of Greek. She completed her doctoral thesis on ' The mediation in late-twentieth century English theatre of some Texts and Images from Greek tragedy concerned with women and power ' in December 1998. (Publications)

Ruth has been active as actor, designer and director in amateur theatre and now pursues her enthusiasm for practical theatre through teaching, viewing and reviewing plays.

Isobel Hurst (Project Research Assistant (during 2006)), is Lecturer in English and Comparative Studies at Goldsmiths, London University. She studied Classics and English at the University of Oxford and maintained an interdisciplinary focus on the reception of classics through graduate work in Victorian literature, a postdoctoral research position at the Bristol Institute of Hellenic and Roman Studies and her work on classical allusion and references in modern poetry for the Reception project. Her book, Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer, was published by Oxford University Press in October 2006.

Antony Keen (Project Research Consultant, Drama) read Athenian drama as part of his degree in Ancient History and Greek at the University of Edinburgh. His Ph.D. research on Achaemenid Lycia was primarily historical, but also led to a couple of short articles on Aeschylean tragedy. He is currently a Research Associate and Associate Lecturer at the Open University.

Through the 1990s he reviewed productions of Greek and Roman drama for the online journal Didaskalia, and continues to write on such subjects for his weblog (http://tonykeen.blogspot.com/). He had a small part in a production of Aristophanes' Peace in 1986, and is now working on an adaptation of Frogs.

The Research Project is also part of the research cluster in classical reception in the Open University Department of Classical Studies.

Rosemary Wilkinson (Project Research Consultant, Poetry) studied for her BA and MPhil in Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge (2001-2005), focusing on Greek literature, and particularly the representation of epiphany in Attic tragedy. She spent several months working for a number of organisations in an administrative capacity, before joining the Department of Classics at the University of Leeds in 2006. There she is employed as a Research Assistant, on the project to publish Names on Terra Sigillata : an index of makers' stamps and signatures on terra sigillata (samian ware).

For the project Rosemary documented two female poets, Eavan Boland and Olga Broumas.

The Research Project is also part of the research cluster in classical reception in the Open University Department of Classical Studies