Environments in Greek Literature
Chloe Borowska is currently researching the relationship between humans and the environment as depicted in early Greek literature. She is particularly interested in how contemporary environmental philosophy, such as feminist ecocriticism and new materialism, can offer new and deeper perspectives on ancient literature.
Her major research output will be a monograph, looking at the different ways that interaction between humans and environments can present the world as essentially reliable or unreliable. She is also in the process of finishing two articles: one on the concept of ecophobia in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, and one on the close identification between trees and human bodies in the death similes of Homer’s Iliad.
Cicero the Philosopher
Sean McConnell is currently working on developments in Cicero's political philosophy around the time of the assassination of Caesar. A particular focus is on the various ways in which the relatively understudied dialogues De senectute and De amicitia relate to the earlier De re publica.
Roman Spain
In 2024, Dan Osland led an archaeological excavation and field school in the Spanish city of Mérida, incorporating students from Otago in a dig focused on the foundations of the Roman city wall and amphitheater. The post-excavation analysis is ongoing, and in the background he is working on a lengthier book project that uses the archaeological record from Mérida's late antique (c. 200-700) phases to investigate the changes that took place in the urban setting during the transition from Roman to post-Roman times.
Roman Coins and the Caesars
Gwynaeth McIntyre is working with Dan Osland to digitize the Greek and Roman coin collections at Tūhura Otago Museum.
She also has a number of research projects associated with Tūhura’s collections which consider how to increase access to museum collections, examine the use of coins in political messaging under the Caesars, and explore the history of antiquities collecting in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Gwynaeth is currently writing a monograph on Suetonius’ De vita caesarum.
Unconventional Family in Roman Comedy
Hannah Sorscher is working on a monograph about families of choice in Roman comedy—publicly staged relationships that do not conform to the traditional patriarchal form of the Roman family. These representations, composed by the non-Roman and lower-class playwrights Plautus and Terence, would have been deeply meaningful to lower-class and enslaved persons, along with women, in the plays’ audiences, and can illuminate our understanding of the diversity of lived family relationships in the ancient Roman world.
Emotions in Greek Warfare
Davide Morassi is continuing his research on the emotional aspects of Greek warfare in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Modern categories and terminology, especially the concept of ‘morale’, are commonly superimposed to the sources without a critical assessment of their applicability in an alien context and in what terms the discourse was framed in antiquity. The mapping of the emotions and their recurrence in historical accounts is expected to isolate the key emotional dynamics associated with warfare and their interplay with each other and the pragmatic aspects of combat.