Classics and Ancient History

Overview

The Classics and Ancient History MPhil, PhD programme from Newcastle University has a long and distinguished international reputation. We deliver quality research and teaching. We have taught Latin and Greek since 1874. We have taught Ancient History since 1910 and Classical Archaeology since 1931.

Our staff include scholars of outstanding international reputation. Our research covers all major aspects of the study of the ancient world.

MPhil and PhD supervision is usually available in:

Ancient history and classical archaeology

• Archaeology of religion and ritual from the Bronze Age to the early Classical era
• Greco–Roman religion
• Greek ethnography
• Late Classical and Hellenistic periods: Alexander the Great and Hellenistic empires; kingship and royal ideology
• Contact and interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks
• The history and archaeology of pre-Roman and Roman Italy
• The late Roman Republic
• Institutions of the Roman world
• The social, economic and cultural history of the Roman Empire
• Roman Greece
• Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
• The era of the tetrarchy and Constantine
• Pagan-Christian relations
• Late Roman/early mediaeval legal history
• Slavery in the ancient world
• Greek art and archaeology

Classical language and literature

• Greek poetry from Homer to the imperial age
• ‘Presocratic’ and ‘Hippocratic’ writers
• Greek tragedy, including its reception
• Ancient didactic poetry
• Second Sophistic
• Ancient linguistic thought, especially etymology
• Greek influence on later literature
• Greek and Roman music, including harmonic theory; instruments and their place in the development of Greek musical science; music and Graeco-Roman society; the representation of musical instruments.
• Greek and Roman oratory and rhetoric
• Cicero: rhetoric, philosophy, politics
• Latin poetry
• Literature and religion in Latin epic
• Time in ancient literature
• Flavian literature and culture
• Ancient historiography
• History of Classical Scholarship
• Reception of the ancient world

Philosophy and science

• Ancient philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics,
• The exact sciences in Greek and Roman antiquity
• The history of Greek and Roman medicine
• Hippocratic medicine and the history of its reception up until the 20th century

You can find a detailed list of classics research areas on our website.

There is a lively research culture in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. We have a seminar programme with contributions from:

• academic staff
• postgraduate students 
• distinguished visiting speakers 

You will have the opportunity to get involved in our student-led Postgraduate Forum. Their activities include publishing an online peer-reviewed journal and organising bi-monthly seminars. At the seminars, students deliver papers to their peers and academic staff. There is also an annual postgraduate conference. Here you can present your research to other regional and national postgraduates and academics.