Public engagement

• 2020-2021

  In September 2020 our Archaeology Room was virtually open as part of Doors Open Days 2020. Visitors were able to find out about the Bridges Collection  and interact with its objects on Sketchfab. 

  In November 2020 two of our Postgraduate students took part in Explorathon 2020. Larisa Ficulle, a second year PhD student, spoke about the Byzantine poet and historian Agathias in a short video that formed part of the Scottish Research Showcase. Eleni Giamarellou, a second year MPhil student, gave a talk on ‘How to become a goddess in three simple steps’ as part of Pecha Kucha. Eleni also participated in XX-Factor with a talk on ‘How reading ancient myths can help us think about the world around us’.

• 2019-2020

  On 1 September 2019, the Archaeology Room in Swallowgate was open to the public from 2pm to 4pm as part of Doors Open Days 2019. Visitors were able to see and handle objects from the Bridges Collection, dating from the Palaeolithic to the Byzantine period.

  On 7 October 2019, Jon Coulston spoke to the Border Archaeological Society (Berwick-upon-Tweed) on ‘Carpow, Corbridge, Carlisle and Newstead: Roman armour developments in Northern Britain’.

  On the 12 October 2019, Alice König was a panellist on ‘Can responsible debate renew democracy?‘; this event formed part of the Festival of Politics at the Scottish Parliament and was co-organised by the RSE’s Young Academy of Scotland.

  In November 2019 Rebecca Sweetman and Alison Hadfield participated in the workshop ‘Replicas in museum and heritage contexts: co-production of guidance’ which was organised by Dr Sally Foster and Prof. Sian Jones (University of Stirling) and funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities. The workshop produced draft guidance on working with replicas which was partly informed by findings of our ‘Through A Glass Darkly’ project. Alison has subsequently written a blog post on our use of replicas titled ‘Touching the past: The role of physical and digital replicas in museums’. 

  In August 2020 Alice König and Jon Hesk took part in an event at army@thefringe with the theatre group NMT Automatics, talking about our collaboration with them on their production of Tempus Fugit, a retelling of the story of Hector and Andromache. 

• 2018-2019

  In September 2018, the Archaeology Room in Swallowgate was open to the public as part of Doors Open Days 2018, showcasing Rebecca Sweetman‘s project Through a Glass Darkly. Rebecca also had a stall at the ‘Connecting Classical Collections‘ event organised by the University of Reading later that month.

  In October 2018, Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis presented and participated in a panel discussion on ‘Manias: Modern Desires for Greek Pasts‘ hosted by the British Academy.

  In December 2018, Dawn Hollis and Jason König held a one-day public engagement event entitled ‘Volcanoes in print’, in collaboration with the University of St Andrews Library, the Pathfoot Press from Stirling, and Professor Gareth Williams from the University of Columbia. The event involved:

  • a display of selected volumes from the Special Collections department, dating from 1500-1800 and chosen for their illustrations of volcanoes, including Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus (1665) and William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (1776)
  • a printing workshop run by printers from the Pathfoot Press, which gave attendees the chance to print a typographical ‘facsimile’ of Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna (1495) and to hear a presentation on the experience of a print workshop in the 15th century
  • a public lecture by Professor Williams on Pietro Bembo’s ascent of Etna.

  In January 2019, Rebecca Sweetman organised an adult printmaking workshop on 'Pots, Patterns and Prints' inspired by the objects and digital images of the Bridges Collection.

  In March 2019, Jon Hesk presented a paper on 'The Athenian funeral speeches: Commemoration, exhortation, justification and glorification' at a joint event of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and The Roman Society in London.

  Also in March, Rebecca Sweetman organised a double event on the theme of ‘Metaphors of Displacement‘, which formed part of the StAnza 2019 festival. In the morning, a colloquium took place where Rebecca was joined by Michael Carroll, the poet A.E. Stallings and a colleague from the School of International Relations, Natasha Saunders, to discuss ‘ideas of changing identity and forced migration as expressed through the written word’. In the afternoon there was a creative poetry workshop for adults, led by the Dunbar-based poet Hannah Lavery.

  In April 2019, Alice König organised an immersive workshop on ‘Visualising War in Different Media: interplay and intervention’. The event began with a tour of Dr Lydia Cole’s exhibition Conflict Textiles at the Byre, followed by papers focusing on ‘the power of different media, individually and interactively, to shape our experiences of and responses to war, past and future’. The event culminated in a public concert titled ‘The Fateful Voyage‘ in St Salvator’s Chapel.

  Also in April, Rebecca Sweetman presented her research on memory at the Fife Museums Forum.

  In July 2019, Jon Coulston spoke on ‘What is new in Roman military equipment studies?’ at the Roman Re-enactment Day in Auckland, New Zealand.

• 2017-2018

  In September 2017, Rebecca Sweetman had a stall at the Scottish Learning Festival at the SECC in Glasgow, and also at the Explorathon at the Museums of the University of St Andrews.

  Also in September, Jon Coulston spoke at the Roman Cavalry Conference which took place at the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle; his paper was titled ‘What were Roman cavalry good for?’

  In November 2017, Rebecca Sweetman had a stall at the Dundee Science Festival, and later that month she presented and ran a workshop at the Museums Association Annual Conference in Manchester.

  In March 2018, Jon Coulston talked on ‘Officers and Soldiers on Trajan’s Column’ at the Roman Army School in Durham.

• 2016-2017

  In 2016-2017, Jon Hesk collaborated with Stephen Jones of the Byre Youth Theatre (now: Byre Youth and Community Arts) and four young performers who devised their own play, ‘Hamartia’, and performed it in June 2017 at the Barron Theatre.

  In December 2016, Stephen Halliwell was a roundtable speaker on ‘Teaching Aristotle’. The event was hosted by UNESCO in Paris and took place on World Philosophy Day, in celebration of the 2400th anniversary of Aristotle’s birth.

  In February and June 2017, Rebecca Sweetman presented her archaeological research to the Fife Museums Forum and the Tayside Museums Forum.

• 2015-2016

  In February 2016, Rebecca Sweetman spoke at the Open Association on ‘Knossos and Crete’.

  In May 2016, Stephen Halliwell spoke at a panel on ‘Are there still two cultures?’ organised by the RSE Young Academy of Scotland. The event, hosted by the Byre Theatre at St Andrews, discussed the relevance to modern times of C.P. Snow’s essay ‘The two cultures’ which described arts and sciences as completely separate.

  In June 2016, an interactive exhibition opened at the MUSA Learning Loft titled ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Perceptions of Artefact, Art and Context’ and was based on Rebecca Sweetman‘s project. The exhibition ran until April 2017 and engaged a series of focus groups and was also accessible to the general public.

• 2014-2015

  In November 2014, Stephen Halliwell spoke at the Open Association on Sappho.

  In March 2015, Jon Coulston spoke to the Falkirk Archaeological Society on ‘Trajan’s Column: A window on the Roman world’.

  In April 2015, Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis discussed the British Museum’s exhibition ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art’ with its Senior Curator Dr Ian Jenkins in a fundraising event for Classics for All.

  In May 2015, Jon Coulston gave a public lecture at the McManus Galleries in Dundee on ‘The armour of the Roman army in northern Britain’, as well as a museum gallery talk on the artefacts in the British Museum touring exhibition ‘Roman Empire: People and Power‘.

  In July 2015, Jon Coulston chaired the ‘Roman armour’ panel at the ‘Ancient Arms and Armour Day’ organised by the Institute of Classical Studies in London.

• 2013-2014

  In July 2014, Jon Hesk gave a lecture at The Institute of Ideas (The Academy) on ‘Morality, Politics and Religion in Euripidean Tragedy’.