Hello and welcome to Regional Classics, a podcast from the University of Oxford,
which reflects and celebrates the diverse voices of Oxford classicists past and present from different parts of the UK.
All the while creating thought provoking conversations, breaking down barriers and showing that if you want to study the world any aspect politics,
history, art, science, literature, culture and much more than you can observe.
Classicists do not and need not come from only a narrow cross-section of society.
This episode features three Oxford classicists from Northern Ireland.
I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Sarah Cullinan Herring and alumna of both Oriel
and University Colleges and now a fellow and tutor in classics at Wadham College.
She previously held teaching positions at Balliol and Trinity Colleges, also by Jenyth Evans.
Once a classics undergraduate at Jesus College, then a mediaevalist,
she is now studying for a doctorate in English at St Edmunds Hall, affectionately known as Teddy Hall.
And finally by Professor Peter Stewart, a fellow at Wolfson College and formerly based at the Courthauld Institute in London.
He's now the director of Oxford's Classical Art Research Centre.
A very warm welcome to you all. Thank you for being on this podcast, Peter.
I wonder if you can just start us off by giving a sense of where exactly you're
from in Northern Ireland and how you first encountered the ancient world.
Well, I was born and brought up in Belfast.
And I think like many people in my first experience of the classical world was at primary school being read Greek myths.
And then when one of the primary school teachers went off for a honeymoon in the Bay of Naples, came back, lots of slides of Pompeii,
which really captivated me, and more experiences like that, particularly to do with archaeology at archaeological sites.
So I think, you know, long before I was in a position to think about studying Latin or anything like that, I think it was fixed.
And in my brain when I was older, I did have the chance of secondary school to study Latin.
And I started learning ancient Greek for myself as well.
And that sort of moved me a little bit away from archaeology, actually, towards the classics in general as a degree.
And I ended up going to Cambridge to read Classics and Jenyth? Hi.
Yes. So, yeah, similar similar to Peter, kind of my earliest encounter with the ancient world.
was also Greek myths and stuff like that.
I distinctly remember being really young and picking up loads of constellations and their names and the stories behind them and stuff like that.
So like Orion and Pegasus. So yeah, from a really young age, I loved all that stuff.
But yeah, I didn't ever really have an opportunity to kind of study classics at school.
So I'm from the northwest Northern Ireland, outside the town called Dungibbon,
but nobody in England has ever heard of when I tried to introduce myself. So I just always to keep myself by saying and instead it's near Derry.
But yeah. So my school never offered Latin. Greek didn't do ancient history.
There was no classical civilisation or anything.
So really, I didn't really know that studying classics was an option until I was like 16, 17 and starting to think about uni.
And my school was really supportive and suggested that I think about Oxford or something for university, and I really enjoyed the humanities.
So I really loved English and history. And as I started looking at the website,
I think it was my mum suggested classics because she'd done a lot in a level or GCSE and she brought up the website and had a look at that.
I distinctly remember at that point being like, whoa, I didn't know ancient Greek existed.
I didn't know about that. I thought we just had Latin, that Greek was just gone.
So that was really cool. But yeah.
And then I think what solidified it was that I studied Antony and Cleopatra for A-level Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
And then just looking into the background of that, I started reading Plutarch's Lives and yeah,
just had no idea that all this literature was out there and then.
Yeah, like that sort of carried on. And when my teacher suggested that I apply for a unique summer schools and I put down,
I think I put on English as my first option because I didn't think I would get into the classics course because I never studied it before.
But the yeah, the classics summer school took me on and I spent a week learning Greek and studying all sorts of stuff.
Yeah, I haven't looked back since. It's just been amazing. What a fantastic journey.
And Sarah. Yeah. Funnily enough, I think I'm kind of like a combination of Jenyth and Peter in some ways.
So for me it was I realise you're really recording the audio of this, but it was actually this book that I had when I was a child,
which is a really amazing illustrated version of The Odyssey, which I kind of obsessively read over and over again.
The images are really evocative, as well as a kind of a good translation for kids,
that it kind of really got me into it, but I think that probably that was where it all started.
It was my classic sort of gateway moment reading that.
And then I went to a school where I was able to study Latin and there was no Greek, but there was a chance to to study laughter.
And I had a really inspirational teacher called John Riley,
who's a bit of a local celeb in North Belfast where I grew up, because he also ran the schools Duke of Edinburgh Award.
So he kind of combined left in and after walking in quite a unique way.
And yet he was really amazing at kind of opening it up a little bit beyond just the language through GCSE lessons like kind of,
you know, language focus.
But actually, John was was brilliant to kind of bringing in, you know, what it was like to to live in ancient Rome of religion.
You know, kind of all of that background material really kind of brought it alive for us, I think.
And he was certainly one of the most popular teachers in the school.
And he also taught A level classical civilisation, which you had the chance to do even if you hadn't done Latin earlier on in the school.
And that's where I discovered more great literature. So he taught us Aristophanes in translation.
And I think that was what really made me think I've got to do this at university. I'm not ready to sort of, you know, leave this behind.
Yeah, it's great to have those influences. And also, like you say,
reading translations of classical text is another gateway into the classics if you're not able to study those languages.
I know that they've recently published a report.
I think Language Trends have done a survey early this year into provision of languages in primary schools in particular,
as well as secondary in Northern Ireland. And as you know, it shows that only one percent of the languages studied at key stage three.
So in secondary school, Latin, and there's no sign of Greek at all.
So the provision is a real problem. And I don't know what your thoughts are on perhaps how that can be combated,
but also how if you're a young student in Northern Ireland and you aren't able to study those languages,
what are some of the other ways that they can engage with the ancient world and discover that passion that that you will found in one way or another?
Yeah, I do. Mind hopping in first, I guess. Yeah. I think there's so much stuff.
I know now that I really wish I'd known as a student or stuff.
I wish I'd been there like there's a really amazing classical association in Northern Ireland that does like a language summer school in Belfast.
And I went once when I was still at university because I picked up Latin halfway through the Greek first and then Latin.
And then I went to the summer school in Belfast for a week and did lots.
And I was just brilliant. And there's just so support of people that were on it I think is ahead of it.
And she's just fantastic. So it's just an amazing resource lot if I'd known that was there in high school,
because I always I try to like, buy a book and teach myself Latin and Greek,
but it just didn't really work out as a 16 year old also trying to do like a and
A-levels and also wondering what on earth all these grammatical terms meant.
I just have no idea. But yeah, that sort of stuff.
And then I said, oh, I find another really amazing gateway into that, especially from the Northern Irish perspective.
It's just like Northern Irish writers. There's been a real kind of uptick, I guess, like this.
Michael Hughes has written a bit in the Iliad, but from the perspective of the troubles, and it's just super moving and really well written.
And then also Seamus Heaney, of course, he's translated the Aeneid book 6 which is So Beautiful.
But it's also I don't know, I just find it really powerful that it's written in a voice from home,
like Northern Irish writers just writing such a different way.
And it just really reminded me that I do know it's Northern Irish, people who bring something different to bring to the table something important.
And it's just really nice to see that connection to home as well with the classical tradition.
I think I would say also that, I mean, obviously the classical languages are really important for the subject,
but on the other hand, they're not the be all and end all.
And, you know, you can you can you can study the world to a very advanced level without feeling you have to become,
you know, become anyway proficient in reading ancient ancient Greek and Latin.
Don't ask how many of us who work in classical archaeology are really accomplished in these languages.
So it's one you know, there's so many different aspects of classical civilisation which are illuminating and exciting and
challenge all kinds of expectations by the ancient world without language being barrier and that.
And there's so much more available.
You know, even when I was growing up online resources and as Jenyth has said by the classical associations, a lot more going on.
So I think, you know, it's it's there. I think if anyone thinks
They might be tempted to pursue these subjects. There's so much available to explore.
I don't think anyone should feel that this is some kind of psychological barrier.
They're about languages, excluding them from the subject. Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
And I think maybe one of the good few good side effects of the pandemic that we've all been
through is that there are so much more available online or lectures and kind of discussion
groups and reading groups all happening kind of over resumes or people can join in from
from all over the world because I know I felt I don't know if he felt this as well,
kind of growing up in Northern Ireland, that there was a lot of exciting stuff happening on the mainland in London.
And kind of a lot of my peers at Oxford when I arrived had been to the British Museum
loads of times and had kind of been to places in London that were based on classic stuff.
And, you know, it's kind of like I'm not sure there's much going on in in Northern Ireland of that sort.
But I think now, you know, there's so much more virtual tours of museums and virtual tours of exhibitions and
stuff that at least people can kind of join in from without having to kind of fly over,
which is maybe not still not very accessible for everyone. No, I completely agree.
I realise this is an audio podcast, but I was like nodding vigorously to that.
But yeah, yeah, it's kind of I also remember going up to the museum and, like, asking whether the attendance was like a really keen teenager.
I was like, do you have any Roman coins or anything? And they were like, Oh, we don't think so.
But I think they do somewhere in their collection.
But yeah, it does definitely like in school, it definitely did feel like that.
And especially whenever I went over on UNIQ and talked to people from England and listened to the sort of stuff like that,
they had like different weekends and taster sessions and stuff running in London especially.
It just it does make you feel very jealous of all that happening.
But yeah, like you say,
like the upside of the pandemic is that there's a lot more online now and stuff just posted on Twitter and everything is just all over social media.
So, yeah, I'd be interested then in how your attitude to classics in the ancient world perhaps altered as you came across to England.
And also was it your subject that influenced you to decide to apply to English universities, or was it a kind of combination of different factors?
Yeah, I mean, I think Queens University, Belfast stop doing classics the year I was applying in 2003.
So I came here in 2003 to start my undergraduate degree. So it wasn't possible for me to stay at home if I wanted to do classics.
And that was a really tough decision. So I remember most of my friends who did apply to English were Scottish universities,
had Belfast in there as well, and they gave him a bit more time to decide if they were ready to move away.
And, you know, they at least had that option then of pursuing their course at home.
And we didn't, you know, the classicists or archaeologists amongst us didn't have that option.
So that was a big blow. And I think it is a big problem for the subject in the province, to be honest, as a as a whole,
that, you know, it means that you have to be willing to or able to move away from home.
And not everybody is willing or able to do that, whether it might be financial reasons or they don't want they're not ready to move,
move away from home or they want to stay in Northern Ireland. So I think that's a that's a really big thing.
I think probably the big thing for me was when I arrived in Oxford realising the sheer breadth of classics.
So all I've been exposed to really was literature. So and a little bit of history, but very much text based.
You're reading a little bit of Latin in the original books. I did do.
You did have the chance to level a GCSE Latin, but then reading Aristophanes and The Odyssey and the Aeneid in English for class civ a level,
and then suddenly arriving over and realising that there's kind of archaeology and philosophy and
epigraphy and papyrology and that it just kind of there was more and more layers to classics.
You know, every kind of year I studied it, I discovered something new and I thought that was incredibly exciting.
So I remember feeling like this is the kind of subject you could study forever and never get to the bottom of it.
Yeah, it's one of the advantages of being in in a larger department as well as a university student.
You know, when I was growing up, I had a very, very piecemeal impression of what classics was about.
And I was I'd come to really love Greek tragedies in translation.
And I was consistently interested in in archaeology, the Latin language.
But I mean, I think it was it was just little glimpses of the subject.
Despite the fact I'll confess, I had an older brother five years older than me, studied classics at Cambridge.
So he had quite different interests from me, I think.
I mean, despite that, I still don't think I completely understood what university was about or what studying classics there would be.
So really, for me, it was just an expansion of this.
Incredibly exciting and complicated discipline, which is really, really stimulating.
Yeah, like like I said beforehand, it was kind of a steep learning curve.
Learning what classics kind of was not knowing that ancient Greek was a thing like a year before I did my interview to, like, arriving.
So, yeah, when I got there,
it was it was just a bit of a culture shock in general coming from somewhere so rural in Northern Ireland then to I mean,
Oxford feels like a big city to me. Still but to other people from London it doesn't.
But yeah. And then expanding what classics was to me, I really agree with what Sarah said, because, like,
my perspective was so much about the literature, like through the tiny snippets that I read.
And then whenever I was doing my Mods,
which were like the first set of exams that you do and you're if you're just doing the straight classics degree one of my tutors
suggested that I look at some of the archaeology papers and that quickly became one of my favourite parts of the course.
I did a Greek vases paper and I took another one for my finals and it was just I just loved it.
And I think the biggest thing for me was when I went and applied,
I viewed it as a this is basically doing a joint history English degree for me because I couldn't decide
between the two for what I wanted to study at uni when I thought all classics is a good way to combine it.
But then once I got here, I realised it's kind of it's more of a study of an entire culture or cultures all around the Mediterranean
world and loads of different people and studying how all of them lived like social history and all that.
So, yeah, expanding it way beyond what I ever conceived it to be before him.
And you can see that so strongly in all of your differing research interests.
Now, I know, Sarah, you've gone from having done some Latin at the beginning to your research, particularly on Greek literature,
Peter, from doing classics and finding out more in archaeology and art and all the different cultural influences that come with that.
And Jenyth you're now doing English and have kind of incorporated that throughout all of your degrees,
I'm interested in how you got into the mediaeval part for you, for your masters.
Can you tell us a bit more about your kind of whole Classics Journey, which is just so interesting?
Oh, thank you. Oh yeah. It has been a bit twisty road to where I've gotten to be.
Yeah. During during my degree. Yeah. I also I really want to pick up on what Peter said, as well as not just about languages, the degree as well.
I didn't do any classical languages before I started, but I really enjoyed both Latin and Greek.
I did struggle trying to learn both of them within four years and then also sit the same exams as everyone else.
But because of that, I was kind of thinking for my options. I wanted to do a dissertation so that wasn't too focussed on just exams and stuff.
And yeah. And then I started reading about I don't know how I came across it,
but I basically found out about a mediaeval saga written in Ireland called Tain Bo Cuailnge,
which is the cattle raid of Cooley, and someone had summed up as Ireland's Iliad.
And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
So I wrote I wrote an undergrad dissertation on kind of that and the use of classics in mediaeval Ireland and specifically
the influence of Virgil in mediaeval Ireland and really enjoyed that and learnt old Irish with the English department.
They were really open. They just said turn up to the classes, see what you think.
I loved it so much. I really wanted to do a masters on it and continue my research.
And now, yeah I did that last year during the pandemic, which was a fun, but yeah.
And now, I learned Middle Welsh during that year as well.
So now I'm writing my Yeah.
My DPhil is hosted by the English faculty.
But it's a comparative study of mediaeval Irish Welsh historical writing and thinking about that and but also a lot of classical reception.
And that's something on Sallust in the Middle Ages and how he's read.
But yeah, I still definitely use all my stuff from my classics degree and like it just opened up so many
different avenues of research and that really because I Latin as well during that as well as well,
helped me a lot for my research. I'm reading mediaeval Latin.
It's just been so, so fun to continue that,
but also in a way that I can bring it back to where I live at my home and research more about that and learn more languages, which is cool.
I love the way you talk about, you know, the challenge of learning Latin and Greek, but then you just went on collecting them! So it obviously gave you a good foundation.
Yeah, I mean, I it helps. I don't have to sit in exam in old Irish.
Old Irish is extremely hard. I guess it kind of helps because once you do something it's just a different language family.
like Celtic languages are so different, the classical languages.
And you go back and sit you Thucydides exam and you're like, OK, that was hard, but it wasn't as hard as that.
Yeah, it definitely like and that's one of the things like classics as well.
I mean, once you have the foundation in Latin and Greek, should you choose to learn them,
if that's part of what you want to do, it could be such a foundation for other languages.
It really, really helps. So I mean, I haven't grappled with old Irish, but I've definitely found that to be the case.
Then when I moved on to do my Ph.D. in Oxford and they suddenly sprung on us all that we had to do
exams in French and German and Italian to prove that we could read scholarship in those languages,
which, you know, when you sort of apply for a DPhil or a Ph.D. in classics,
you think, Oh, I'm going to be doing my good Greek literature that I signed up for.
And I think suddenly you've got to do these exams. So I had to kind of go to these weekly lessons of French and German for classicists.
And I definitely find that Latin and Greek can of they're sort of deeply buried sometimes, but definitely there is a scaffolding to help.
So, yeah, that was a kind of unexpected benefit. I guess a lot of having done the classical languages.
Certainly I'm interested in how you felt like kind of your background is fed into your research
and your work and and especially when we look at the historical and political context,
to classics and and the breadth that we've already covered that it encompasses. Yeah. I mean, I think that Jenyth really touched on this earlier,
but the I completely agree with what she said about the relevance of classical literature for understanding the Northern Ireland conflict.
And I'm 35, so I kind of missed the really bad part of the troubles.
But I definitely much more so than maybe someone 10 or 15 years younger.
My childhood was really coloured by things like bomb scares or, you know,
kind of protests and kind of protests are on the orange marches that happen every summer and kind of a lot of violence or in that.
So, you know, there was a big army presence on the streets of Northern Ireland when I was growing up,
which stopped in nineteen ninety nine after the Good Friday Agreement.
But it was normal to see tanks rolling on the streets, very heavily armed British soldiers.
And I think there's a lot of classical literature that looks that kind of conflict and
occupation and the kind of collateral damage of war or civil war that really spoke to me.
So I think probably rather than being from Northern Ireland affecting my research,
it's almost like my reading of classical literature has helped me understand more what it means to be
from Northern Ireland and to help me understand the kind of conflict more and put it into context.
And I think there's a there's a real movement for that.
And also, I don't know if any of the Peter or Jenyth read the novel Country, which is a kind of version of the Iliad.
So a prose novel. And I mean, it was incredible. And it sort of took the Iliad and kind of rewrote it based in Northern Ireland.
And I thought it was just a tour de force. And so, so interesting as a way of exploring all of the issues around the conflict in Northern Ireland.
I sort of want to answer your question by saying that, no, my background hasn't been relevant to my research at all, really,
because I'm looking at big sort of global questions about connections between ancient art traditions and so on and on.
Really, you know, no matter how big the subject is or how unrelated it might appear to be from the things that are closest to you and your background,
actually there is a kind of deeper relevance. So I wanted to say all of that.
But then immediately I started thinking and actually a large part of my research has been on culture in the provinces of the Roman Empire,
the Roman provincial art, art in Roman Britain, for example.
And I have thought a lot in my research, actually, about what it means to be on the fringe of other countries or to,
you know, to be provincial to provincial culture within some kind of bigger entity.
So I think probably on the on a deeper level, that has been relevant as well.
Yeah, that's super interesting and actually kind of doesn't first spring to mind.
But the more you consider it,
then the more thinking there is behind what have obviously been real passions for you and you've explored as you've gone on throughout your career.
What are some of the interdisciplinary connections that all three of you, I think have have have drawn and enjoy discovering?
Are there any particular examples that you know that really excite you and interest you?
The classics as a discipline is inherently interdisciplinary.
As Jenyth was saying, it's the study of a whole culture, the whole society with all its facets interlinked with each other.
But it's also an incredibly accommodating subject that is very flexible.
So I am interested in connections between Greek and Roman culture and other cultures of the ancient world.
To the extent that a lot of what I'm working on at the moment is, you know,
ancient Buddhist art in the area of what's now Pakistan and its connections with
the Greco Roman world or connections between ancient China and the classical world.
And I do these things in Oxford and nobody bats an eyelid, you know,
it's like I don't think it's crossed anyone's mind that what I do might not be classics.
So it's almost like, you know,
you can test the boundaries of the subject and you actually discover that whatever direction your academic journey takes you,
it's still somehow part of classics as a discipline.
And it's still rooted it still has that sort of centre of gravity in core aspects of Greek and Roman culture, the Mediterranean world.
But it's incredibly accommodating.
It gives you a foundation for basically anything you might be interested in arising from that.
Do you think in some ways then it would be better if there were a different word than classics for describing the breadth of the subject,
or does it actually give us that flexibility and that those boundaries are malleable enough under under the heading?
I was thinking about that after seeing this sort of debate on Twitter about it.
And I think probably in some ways the term classics isn't very helpful.
I also find that when in a practical level, as an undergraduate, it doesn't so much happen now but as an undergraduate.
When I went home to Northern Ireland and said I studied classics, people would be like music.
No. Oh, Jane Austen then? No, you know, cars? definitely not.
You know, and I think it's not a word that kind of explains what the subject is in a way,
very helpfully, unlike almost every other subject that you can study at university.
So I think I'd probably be quite pro changing the name to something else and potentially something more more inclusive.
That reflects the fact that the study of the ancient world or ancient cultures can
and must encompass so much more than study of just ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
And I think, you know,
that kind of interdisciplinarity or breath that that might bring of kind of knitting together classics with other branches of ancient study,
ancient worlds, ancient culture can only be a good thing, really.
I think there are some advantages, though, in having a word sort of, you know, doesn't inherently mean anything because you can reinvent it.
You can apply to all kinds of things. And I mean, the word Classics, it does have its problems and has a lot of baggage with it.
Certainly in the past, it's been regarded as sort of, you know, it conjures up images of a sort of elitist education.
And it's been brought home to me as well. Recently, I've written a number of things where to be translated into Chinese.
And although there are equivalent words for classical, the classical equivalent of classical,
you always have to qualify it to make it clear you're not talking about Chinese classical culture, but rather Greco Roman culture.
So I find myself using the term Greco Roman a lot more, but at the same time none of the alternatives to classics like Greco,
Roman studies, ancient Mediterranean studies or whatever it might be.
None of them seem to me actually to to encapsulate all the things that are important for this discipline in its modern form.
So so, again, I think sometimes just having this weird word classics is a handle for the subject.
Can be can be useful. I think the risk that we need to avoid is that people start to think of it as a kind of
I've noticed more and more in the last year or two journalists talking about the classics,
which kind of conjures up an image of a,
you know, a sort of range of canonical literary texts or something like the classic books that we must study,
which couldn't be more different from what the discipline actually is.
So we need to try and avoid that kind of pitfall.
Yeah, I don't have too much more to add. I think you have said it, but yeah, it's really funny that I had the exact same experience as Sarah,
where it was somewhere in a restaurant was coming to take our order.
And my mom and dad were so proud that I just got my offer and they were like 'what you studying'.
And I said classics and they were like, oh, I love Jane Austen. Like, she's the best.
I was like, not quite, but yeah.
Yeah, I think I saw I'm personally a fan of maybe ancient world studies or something just because of that.
And I kind of agree. But I think there's some really good discussions happening on Twitter and in different departments at the moment.
And I'm just excited to see where the discipline takes itself and how, yeah, this goes.
I just be interested to know what Peter and Jenyth think of the the kind of concerns that people have that are being raised in debates on Twitter.
That classics is inherently kind of white supremacist or or racist in its actual conception.
I mean, is that a concern that you felt as sort of students of and then teachers of the subject?
It's definitely something. Well, I mean, if you're on Twitter as well, there's definitely been a reckoning of mediaeval studies as well,
especially with the use of the term Anglo-Saxon. And so it's been something I've obviously felt about being in and both of those subjects.
And I don't know it's it's I obviously don't have an answer to it, because obviously if we did, then that would be resolved.
But it's such a complicated question.
But what I do know is that there's some really exciting and amazing work, especially going on at the university by like the Christian Cole Society.
So I'm really keen to support all of that work and everything that's happening.
But I do think we have to kind of reckon with the background of the subject and the history of the subject, because it doesn't.
Yeah, I think just ignoring it isn't the approach. The answer is kind of working together and supporting each other in that.
I got to go with your answer. I don't really have a solution. But, you know, I think one of the things that has made this,
it's actually impeded the discussion to some extent is the big difference in perspective, particularly on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
You know, some of the some of the language that was used in critiquing classics as a discipline in America,
which is kind of targeted at a kind of image of classics,
as you know, as the study of Western civilisation or something that makes a lot less sense in the context of British classics,
you know, sometimes struggling to to compute what that's all about,
even though for many years I think there's been a lot of soul searching within classics in this country about this,
you know, by all the, you know, inequalities and prejudices that are embedded in the discipline of its history.
You know, there is there's common ground there.
And I think a sort of common consensus about the need for critical reflection, about the discipline and about many other disciplines of the humanities
As well,
but I think some of the headlines can be a distraction from getting into the getting into the complexity of those debates and trying to work out,
you know, in tighter contexts what the problems actually are, what their legacy is and how you address that.
And how do you think that we can, as Oxford classics here
represented by people all kind of stages within their careers of being classicists and
encountering the different subjects too, how can we make the the discipline more accessible,
but also more appealing,
trying to show the light in between the headlines and the positivity around the subject and the importance of debate and
of thinking critically about about our discipline to young people around both Northern Ireland and around the rest of the UK.
I'm going to say I don't think you need to make the subject any more appealing.
I think it's I think it's intrinsically appealing and exciting and fascinating and not just for a small group of people who got into it,
but actually much more widely.
You only have to look at the popularity of some of the television programmes dealing with archaeology or ancient history,
or the celebrity of Mary Beard and some other colleagues, for example, who have brought this subject to wide audiences.
You know, there's a real thirst, actually, from people of all kinds of different ages and different places for finding out about the ancient world.
And I think that the challenge for us is perhaps to tap into that,
but also to try and demonstrate that maybe some of the imagined barriers to studying it professionally, you know, aren't real obstacles.
And, you know, I think I think Oxford sometimes has particular problems because there's a lot of Oxford bashing that goes on.
There's a stereotype of Oxford as an exclusive place, and it's repeated in a slightly lazy way sometimes in the media,
dare I say, by politicians over and over again, which probably reinforces that.
And I think I think we need to get the message out to people that that actually Oxford
Oxford classics is isn't one thing, that all kinds of people come here to study this subject.
Whoever you are, wherever you're from, whatever you are, you know, there's a place for you in Oxford.
potentially studying the subjects that you don't need to have any preconceptions about what kind of person can come and study classics here.
And I think, you know, one of the things very striking.
I guess the background to this to these podcasts is that the Oxford attracts people from all over the world to study classics,
particularly international students at postgraduate level, especially, but at the undergraduate level, disproportionately from certain parts of England.
So we've got international students and we've got the south of England.
And really, this should be a place for people who are enthusiastic about the subject from from from every part of the country.
So I think through exercises like this are valuable in trying to get that message out.
Yeah, I have to agree as well. If I'm from a purely Northern Irish point of view as well,
and fairly recent from leaving school, I guess, although it's now been like seven years, maybe not that recent!
But I think one of the main barriers for coming from Northern Ireland to go
into Oxford was the perception either about not getting in or not belonging.
As you say, Peter, like everyone at my school was like is just going to be full of posh English people.
Why would you want to go there?
Also, the fees barrier, as well is a massive thing, you pay half the amount of fees to go to Belfast or anywhere in Northern Ireland for uni.
And that's a big deal to people.
And that's a big financial barrier that's in place that I think needs to be addressed a bit more, talked about a bit more.
And then, yeah, I, I was particularly thinking about it before this podcast.
I think it's definitely a general approach of English universities in general to Northern Ireland,
but there's no sort of sustained engagement or kind of explanation of how to apply to uni in England,
why you should apply to uni in England, and then for Classics in particular, why you should study humanities.
I think that's a massive barrier back home, because I distinctly remember in my physics class a boy I was talking to,
one of the boys in my class about going to Oxford. I just got my offer and he said to me, Oh, such a waste that you're not studying science there.
I was like, OK, but at the time I was like, that was just done the attitude.
like, if you're not studying science or maths, there's no point.
I think we were really missing a trick by not explaining how many transferable
skills you can get from your degree from a purely cynical point of view.
But just how enjoyable the discipline is, how varied it is, the directions you can go.
And, yeah, it just doesn't limit you in any way like even like a science degree might.
Yeah, there was just whenever I was in school, it was really like once every two years they'd be an Oxbridge day talk.
I think there's something a bit more sustained. But yeah, it just kind of felt like it was like an access programme was like,
oh, we'll do one day in Northern Ireland here and then that's us done. We've done our thing.
But something sustained and more of a relationship with the schools in Northern Ireland, I think would have a massive impact of just knowing.
Yeah, knowing what's going on and having a contact and knowing what's happening because you're too shy as a teenager to
ask those questions in one day, but if you have a sustained thing, I think it would be better.
But anyway, that that's also just a general approach of English universities to Northern Ireland in general.
So much of that kind of resonates with me. I think probably there are two strands that I would pick from from my perspective.
I spent 10 years in teaching and secondary education before I came back to Oxford a couple of years ago to to work at the faculty and at Wadham.
So I think I could have seen this from a teaching perspective to you.
And what kind of motivates people to apply for different degrees or what are their concerns?
And I think thinking about Northern Ireland in particular, there is a real I think, a culture there of valuing practical, pragmatic subjects.
So STEM subjects or subjects that directly lead to a career. So I had a lot of people telling me, you know, but you're really bright.
Why don't you do law? You know, why don't you do something that really obviously leads to a kind of professional
career and people kind of were a bit suspicious about what you could actually do,
you know, with with classics. And then I think this was less of an issue.
And I went to university, but with the level of fees, the way they are noise. So you're paying nine thousand pounds a year.
I think there's a lot of concern from some parents.
Again, they want their if their their children are going to get into a lot of debt from university again,
they think, well, why not do something more "practical" in inverted commas?
So I think communication about what a humanities degree or what degree can offer, you know, the pupils, the applicants, and to reassure the parents,
you know what what kinds of careers and opportunities are possible after that that don't just involve
being a classical teacher or staying on to do the classics PHD as wonderful as obviously those things are.
And I think that's where the kind of communication about how multidisciplinary classics is could be really helpful so that it's not just one thing,
as Peter said, but involves, you know,
the possibility of studying loads of different things, each of which could lead on to multiple career paths and and give you other skills,
you know, thinking about the kind of practical sort of archaeology side of things.
I've got a friend who did classics, who now does kind of practical archaeology for new developments.
So he kind of searches for anything important historically. And that's what he did with his classics degree.
So you don't have to end up as a kind of as classics teacher. There's lots of different things you can do.
And looking back, I realise, you know, you got a lot of advice from relatives, from teachers, often quite negative advice. I remember
science teachers are shocked when they heard that 'he wanted to study Latin' or whatever.
But now I think there's sort of well-meaning advice which is often based on very limited knowledge or or a kind of knowledge of one example,
you know, some anecdotal information about somebody who went to a particular university or whatever.
And so I want to encourage people, you know, potential students,
but also their families actually actually find out more about what's really involved from a particular
university they're interested in or just the discipline in general rather than just jumping to conclusions.
Yeah, just off the back of that as well. I think the thing that just completely changed my whole application or the chances of my
application was going on UNIQ and going to Oxford for a week like that scheme was so,
so helpful to me in breaking all the perceptions that I had.
Because as you say, Peter, you get loads of people thinking that they're an expert in what England and
are Oxford going to be like and they don't have a clue,
like another friend at school thought that you have to wear subfusc to all your lectures and everything.
That was the reason that you didn't apply because you didn't want to wear a uniform all day. And it was stuff like that.
But yeah, it would just be great. Like, schemes like that are so great and amazing, but it would be great as well if there was more of us coming,
like not expecting more from our students to come to Oxford or to do a bit more meeting, getting us on our own ground.
I think I'll be really, really cool and helpful. Yeah, that's an excellent idea that you didn't all have to wear subfusc every day.
But what were some of the highlights of your Oxford experience,
whether that be academically or socially or any kind of aspect of your Oxford
time as a student or as a tutor or teacher that really stands out to you?
Jump in. So I think for me, the most exciting thing and the most memorable thing that I did as a student here
was actually when I was a master's student and I did a module in papyrology.
And so I was taught how to to read the different scripts on into papyri and kind of make
transcripts of them and work out what what text they were from or whether they were.
They might be a literary text. Of course, these papyri are, or they could equally be a what we call a documentary.
Papyrus, which is a kind of a non-literary written record of something from the ancient world,
so people kind of sometimes sarcastically say it's a shopping list,
but it could be something a bit more interesting than that, than a shopping list, a legal document or a letter or something like that.
And I just find that completely fascinating. It was completely different from the sort of slightly diluted way.
I think a lot of people who work on literature like myself,
we normally use modern editions that you take off the shelf in the library there like any other book.
And of course, the content in the material is amazing and inspiring and it's what keeps us coming back.
But that direct connection with the ancient world.
Of course, we'll be much more familiar to someone like Peter who works with objects, which was just completely thrilling for me so,
to hold a papyrus between glass safety preserved from the oils in my hands,
but to hold a kind of ancient papyrus that had been written by a person in the second century B.C. and to read it and then to kind of
compare that to other versions of that literary text that we have and realise that this was a different version of Aristophanes Thesmophoriazeusae,
or this is a different version of Homer's Iliad.
And it was just it was absolutely incredible. And it made me feel so connected to the world in a way that I think I hadn't before,
you know, despite the fact that I was already deeply invested in it.
Yeah, I have I kind of from a classics perspective,
like I have a very similar kind of story to Sarah as well, like whenever I did my Greek Vases paper,
from what I was taught by a professor called Thomas Mannack
and we did a practical handling session in one of the rooms and the faculty kind of linked to the Ashmolean.
And yeah, it was we were just holding vase fragments and looking at them.
And it was like a little thing about whether you could date them from the paintings on the side or the shapes or whatever.
I remember holding one piece and he told me to flip it over and there was fingerprints from the potter like the Potter.
who had made it. It was just such a moment of being like like this is studying like a culture
and actual people like these people lived like over two thousand years ago.
And I'm holding part of their work that they made that may have been super important to them,
may not have been, but it was so just really, really cool to have it, like, come alive in that moment.
And then as I was doing that, John Boardman just walked past.
He's like the expert in Greek Vases, written loads of books.
I just read all his books that term. And I was just like, this is a really cool place to study Classics.
There's just a lot going on. But yeah. And then Oxford in general, just like formal halls and just being in such beautiful settings and just meeting,
meeting such amazing people I'm choosing loads of best things about Oxford here
But I know that I've made friends for life here and that's just so incredible and.
Yeah. And doing lots of sport as well. Like I took up rowing for the first time.
I'm not sure that anyone or that I would have been able to do that any other university.
So yeah, it's just lots of lots of fun times as well.
Studying. I was never a student in Oxford, but I was attracted to come and work here ten years ago,
partly because I used to be the biggest classics department in the world and the biggest concentration of classical archaeologists as well,
or more specifically, people studying Greek and Roman art.
So it's very exciting to come into that kind of community of people with shared interests.
But I mean, one of the amazing things about Oxford is because it's so big in certain subjects like classics that,
you know, no matter how obscure your interests are or,
you know, if you think something was really idiosyncratic and only you are thinking about it, it's quite likely that you'll find people to talk to.
in Oxford and in my first week working here, just, you know, socially, I,
I met six people who studied the Sogdians, now, nobody listening to this will be looking at the Sogdians
And so the ancient people who inhabited parts of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or so six people,
six Sogdian experts I met in that first week and they didn't even know each other, but they were working in different parts of Oxford.
So it's not even just the faculty of classics. It's about people with intersecting interests in different departments and at different colleges.
And that just makes it so exciting and it creates all kinds of opportunities as well that you simply wouldn't have anywhere else.
And I think that's sort of true too of the way that I teach here and we all teach here, but I personally,
because I come from teaching a school to big classes of 24 or 30 and then teaching now in very small tutorial groups,
or maybe even one on one, if someone's chosen something a little bit niche,
is that, you know, I feel that my students are sort of very intimately involved in my research in that, you know,
I have these conversations with very, very bright, very engaged students about the literature and, you know, kind of spark ideas off each other.
And, you know,
I get the privilege of being involved in their classical journey and seeing them develop all of these ideas about the text that we're studying.
And then in turn, you know, they kind of help shape my ideas.
So I think that's so stimulating. And I obviously had that experience as an undergraduate as well from the other side.
And I remember thinking, you know, I'm coming into a tutorial with Richard Rutherford, who's written, you know,
how many books on Homer, and he's listening to what I have to say about Homer and kind of reading my essay on Homer.
You know, how great is that? And I get to have this hour long conversation with him about this, you know, these ancient texts, which he is an expert on.
So I think that that aspect of it as well is just completely thrilling and keeps being so even now as a teacher here.
Yeah, of course, I should have said that the students are the best part, but it's true,
the students are brilliant and that's one of the real pleasures of the job.
Yeah, I was just going to say as well,
there's so many moments when I was in tutorials in like beautiful old rooms and colleges and just discussing just any aspect of the ancient
world that I wanted to about classical Athens or Rome and stuff and being in the moment thinking why I'm so lucky to be able to do this.
This is just so cool and so much fun. So, yeah.
And as you say, the respect, I think, that is built between students and tutors, that it's very much a two way conversation.
And as you said, you know, you're learning from each other.
And it's often, I think, for people, sometimes the first time they've experienced that or you when you arrive,
you think, oh, my gosh, these these are tutors and they're so far above me and they know everything.
And I couldn't possibly engage in the conversation, they'll never listen to my ideas. And yet you actually do have those great moments.
And that's what the real about the power of the tutorial system and being able to not only have that conversation with an expert,
but to learn from each other, too, is fantastic. I think that moment when you realise too which I still remember the first moment
I realised I was allowed to disagree with the secondary literature and that,
you know, my my tutor not only kind of allowed that but was encouraging me to to to critique the secondary teacher and to say,
actually, you know, this person might be a kind of a great scholar of, you know, the 20th century.
But, you know, ideas have moved on,
knowing why we study classics and what are the flaws in his argument and to be empowered to do that and to be able to
kind of take your own position as well as just I find that really kind of a really stimulating part of learning classics here.
Yeah, I guess I don't know if there is a final note to end on,
I think I think speaking specifically to North Irish people, I think as a country, we're all so is modest
The word I don't know or just like just not there's like this whole culture of being like, no, I don't think I can do that.
So I won't even apply to to Oxford or whatever it is.
And I would just say go for it.
Like this, like Oxford has honestly changed my life and the way I think and the people that I've met here have just been incredible,
like outside of anything to do with the course. But the course, Classics course, was fantastic as well.
So I just really encourage anyone to give it a go and just go for it, apply for UNIQ, if you can, and see if it fits you.
You won't. You know, there's only one way to find out, really, by having a having a stab at it.
So. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah, absolutely.
I think that it's definitely true that there's a kind of a national tendency to be told by parents
and maybe even teachers not to put yourself forward and not to kind of disagree with people.
So I remember we watched a video in school that came from an Oxford admissions
team and the girl in the video disagreed with her interviewers and sort of said,
no, I do think it was actually for law she was applying for. And she kind of took an opposite stance.
And my teacher said, well, I wouldn't advise any of you to do that in your interviews, you know, it is the fastest way to get rejected.
So I think, you know, there's definitelym I would agree with you.
there is that sort of tendency to modesty and to be warned against and just have a go and come along and see what you think exactly,
well, do come along and see what you think.
Thank you so much to all three of you for a fabulous conversation and discussion and taking part in this episode of Regional Classics.
And thank you for listening.