CADRECentre for Ancient Drama and its Reception

Members and contributors

CADRE membership is diverse, including staff with an array of different specialties. Find out a little more about our members below, as well as some of the many other people we have collaborated with on various projects. 

Lynn Fotheringham
Former CADRE Director Lynn Fotheringham reading from the book of myths that inspired her to study classics
 
 

University of Nottingham members

Heike Bartel
Department of German Studies

I am Associate Professor in German Studies, and my research focuses on German literature, women’s writing and gender studies and comparative literature. Two research projects focus on myth and myth reception from the 18th-21st century, with a particular focus on the myth of Medea, and the reception of Classical Antiquity in contemporary cultures and societies.

I convene the module Mythology in German Literature: Medea (see the related studies page for more details), which looks closely at how the myth is used, changed and reinvented in German texts written between 1926 and 1998. I have co-edited Unbinding Medea: interdisciplinary approaches to a classical myth from antiquity to the 21st century (2010) with Anne Simon.

 
Peter Kirwan
School of English

I am Assistant Professor in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama. I have done work on modern productions of classic tragedy (partly in relation to the NT Live project, who broadcasted Medea and Phaedra).

I am writing on and working with theatre company Cheek by Jowl, looking at their productions of Philoctetes (1988), Antigone (1999), and Racine's Andromache (1985 and 2007-9).

 
Alan Sommerstein
Department of Classics and Archaeology

I am Emeritus Professor of Greek. My main speciality is ancient Greek drama, both tragedy and comedy; I have worked on all the major dramatists and many minor ones, and produced (alone or in collaboration) complete editions of 19 fully (or almost fully) preserved and 13 fragmentary plays.

I have also led a major team research project (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) on the Oath in Archaic and Classical Greece, which produced a database of all references to oaths in Greek literary and inscriptional texts down to 322 BC, followed by a two-volume study of the subject. I am now editing an Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy, and preparing an edition of Aeschylus' tragedy The Suppliants. I am a contributor to the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama.

 
Oliver Thomas
Department of Classics and Archaeology

I am Assistant Professor in Classics, having joined the University in February 2014. My main area of research is Ancient Greek literature and religion, more specifically hymns, and in particular the Homeric Hymns.

I have co-written a book with David Raeburn about one of Aeschylus’ tragedies, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students, published by OUP. In 2013, I produced the Cambridge Greek Play.

 
Lynn Fotheringham
Department of Classics and Archaeology

I attend as many performances as I can and, in my former role as CADRE director, I have organised a number of theatre trips and film-screenings for members of the department and interested friends.

I have published on narrative speeches in Sophocles and I teach a module on Euripides: Experiments in Tragedy, but my main drama interest is modern performances of Greek tragedy, which I teach as part of  the module Classics and Popular Culture.

I am currently working on the BBC tragedy productions of the late Don Taylor, especially his 1990 Iphigenia at Aulis in comparison with Cacoyannis' 1997 film based on the same play.

See Lynn's full staff profile.

 
Maike Oergel
Department of German Studies

I am Associate Professor in German Studies, and also Director of the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies. I am interested in the Enlightenment and Romantic reception of Classical Greek drama (and culture) against the background of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, especially in Britain and Germany. My work focuses on 18th and early 19th-century constructions of modernity and modern national identities, and the way in which these constructions contrast as well as assimilate and appropriate ancient culture.

 
Edmund Stewart
Department of Classics and Archaeology

I am Assistant Professor in Classics. A major element of my research is in Greek tragedy and its context and dissemination in antiquity. I completed my PhD, Wandering Poets and the Dissemination of Greek Tragedy (supervised by Patrick Finglass and Alan Sommerstein), at Nottingham in 2013. This work, published by Oxford University Press, represents the first full study of the dissemination of Greek tragedy in the archaic and classical period.

As a Teaching Associate in Classics I designed the module Greek Tragedy: Orestes on Stage in the Fifth Century BC and have supervised the dissertations of undergraduate and MA students on various subjects relating to ancient drama. I am a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
Betine Van Zyl Smit
Department of Classics and Archaeology

I have been Associate Professor in the Department of Classics since 2006. My research interests include the tragedies of Seneca and the reception of ancient literature, especially drama. At Nottingham I have taught the modules Blood and Ghosts: Senecan Tragedy, Roman Comedy, and Greek Drama and its Reception, as well as Latin modules focusing on dramatic texts.

I have published extensively on the reception of Classical drama in South Africa. I am the editor of Wiley-Blackwell’s Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, published in 2015. I am also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
 

Fomer external collaborators  

Mohammad Almohanna
Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, Kuwait

Mohammad Almohanna obtained his PhD, Carnivalesque in Satyr Play (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2012. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Kuwait.

He returned to Nottingham in 2014 to give a paper, Antarah Ibn Shaddãd: Heracles of Arabia at the Classical Association AGM. He is a contributor to the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
Emiliano Buis, Department of Classics, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Emiliano Buis studied in Nottingham in 2006; his PhD, Comic Justice: Uses and Abuses of Athenian Law in Aristophanes’ comedies, 427-414 (University of Buenos Aires, 2009), was co-supervised by Alan Sommerstein. Having qualified in both Classics and Law, he has always worked from an interdisciplinary perspective.

He is Assistant Professor in Greek at the University of Buenos Aires, a researcher at the National Council for Science and Technology (CONICET) in Greek Philology, and currently supervising a research project on normativity in classical Athens in Argentina. He also holds a tenured position at the Law School at Buenos Aires. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC and from the Alexander Onassis Foundation in Athens. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy and the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Tragedy.

 
Judith Fletcher, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada 

Judith Fletcher was a regular visiting scholar at the University between 2004 and 2006.  She was a key member of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Oaths Project, co-editing Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (2007) with Alan Sommerstein and contributing to Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (2014). See our publications page for more details.

She is Professor in the Department of History at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario). Her research on Greek Drama is concerned with the intersections of gender, law and religion in the context of the Athenian democracy; she is currently working on a book entitled Engendering Law in Ancient Greek Drama, funded by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

 
Kyriaki Konstantinidou, Department of History, Bosporus University, Turkey

Kyriaki Konstantinidou obtained her PhD, Legousa tēn kakēn aran: cursing in Aeschylus’ Oresteia (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2009 as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Oaths Project.

She is currently Onassis Foundation Teaching Fellow at Bosphorus University, Istanbul. Her research interests are in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Culture, Ancient Greek Religion and Literary Texts, and Greek Drama. She contributed the chapter “Oath and curse” to Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (Sommerstein and Torrance, 2014). She is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy. See our publications page for more details.

 
Gunther Martin, Department of Classical Philology, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Gunther Martin was postdoctoral Advanced Research Fellow at Nottingham in 2010-2011. He was previously SNSF fellow at the Institute for Classical Philology, University of Bern, and is now SNSF professor at the University of Zurich. He is interested in communication conventions in Greek drama and Greek oratory.

 
Sarah Miles, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham

Sarah Miles obtained her PhD, Strattis, Comedy and Tragedy (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2009. She is currently Lecturer in Classics and her interests include Greek drama and paratragedy (5th–3rd centuries BCE); Greek cultural history; the popularisation of Greek drama in the ancient world; Greek and Roman comic genres and reception (esp. in animation).

Sarah returned to Nottingham in 2014 to contribute to the panel marking Alan Sommerstein’s retirement, Talking about Laughter: Responses to Aristophanes and Alan Sommerstein, at the Classical Association AGM.

She is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy and the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama (see our publications page), and is working on a monograph on Greek Tragedy and its Reception in the Fragments of Old Comedy.

 
Cressida Ryan, Merton College
University of Oxford 

Cressida Ryan obtained her PhD, Eighteenth-century responses to Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus (supervised by Judith Mossman), from the University of Nottingham in 2010. She is currently Instructor in New Testament Greek in the Theology Faculty at the University of Oxford. She is working on Early Modern Latin drama, including Latin editions and translations of Greek tragedy, and Jesuit Neo-Latin drama, as well as on the relationship between Greek tragedy and musical theatre, particularly opera.

Cressida returned to Nottingham in 2014 to give a paper entitled: From Alexander to Xerxes, Triumphant Tragedy and Tragic Triumph on the British Stage at the Classical Association AGM.

 
Isabelle Torrance, Associate Professor, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark

Isabelle Torrance was post-doctoral fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded Oath Project at the University of Nottingham from 2004 to 2007, which culminated in the publication of Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (2014), co-edited with Alan Sommerstein. Before that she obtained her PhD, on Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians (supervised by Judith Mossman), from Trinity College Dublin in 2004.

She was previously Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame, and is now Associate Professor, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. She is working on Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy. She is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
Rosie Wyles, Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies, University of Kent

Rosie Wyles was Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham in 2009-2011. Before that she studied Classics at Oxford, and obtained her PhD on the role of costume in the ancient performance reception of Euripides’ Telephus, Heracles and Andromeda from the University of London.

She has been involved with the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Oxford since 2004. While at Nottingham, she co-edited The Pronomos Vase and its Context (2010) with Oliver Taplin and produced a monograph, Costume in Greek Tragedy (2011). She is currently Lecturer in Classical Literature and History at the University of Kent. She is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy and the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama.

 
Andreas Antonopoulos, Department of Philology, University of Patras, Greece

Andreas Antonopoulos is post-doctoral fellow at the University of Patras in Greece. His research focused on ancient Greek satyr-play, and he hosted a conference on this topic in July 2016.

He is currently preparing a new edition with translation and commentary of Sophocles’ fragmentary satyr-play Ichneutai (‘The Trackers’), the best preserved satyr-play after Euripides’ Cyclops, so is very significant for our understanding of a genre of Greek drama much less known than Tragedy and Comedy. The project is funded by a fellowship from the C. Carathéodory Programme for Postdoctoral Research.

 
David Carter, Department of Classics, University of Reading

David Carter obtained his PhD, The Political Philosophy of Sophocles (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2002. He is currently Head of ISLI at the University of Reading.

His CADRE-related publications include The Politics of Greek Tragedy (2007) and Why Athens? A reappraisal of tragic politics (2011). He is a founder member and co-director of an international network on the Legacy of Greek Political Thought. His work focuses on the ancient Greek and modern theories of rights.

David returned to Nottingham in 2014 to contribute to the panel marking Alan Sommerstein’s retirement, Talking about Laughter: Responses to Aristophanes and Alan Sommerstein at the Classical Association AGM.

 
Laura Gianvittorio, Department of Classics, University of Vienna, Austria

Laura Gianvittorio was a visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham in 2013. She obtained her PhD from the University of Palermo in 2008 and, following a series of posts in Germany and Austria, is currently working on a postdoctoral research project at the University of Vienna.

At both Nottingham and Vienna she has been working on Aeschylus’ diegetic drama, investigating the functions of narrative in Aeschylus. She is also very interested in ancient theatrical dances.

 
Lynn Kozak, Department of Classical Studies, McGill University, Canada 

Lynn Kozak obtained her PhD, Hektor: Relationships and Characterisation in the Iliad (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2009, as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Oath Project. While in Nottingham she co-edited Playing around Aristophanes (2006) and directed a student production of Sophocles’ Trachiniae accompanied by a one-day conference on Modern Perceptions and Productions (2006).

She is currently Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at McGill University, where she organises the annual McGill Classics Play and is co-director of Oimoi Productions.

She contributed to Sommerstein and Torrance, Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (2014), and returned to Nottingham in 2014 to convene a panel marking Alan Sommerstein’s retirement, Talking about Laughter: Responses to Aristophanes and Alan Sommerstein, at that year’s Classical Association AGM.

 
Peter Meineck, Department of Classics, New York University, USA

Peter Meineck obtained his PhD, Opsis: the visuality of Greek drama (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2011. He has worked in professional theatre as a technician, production manager, designer, producer and director.

In 1991 he founded Aquila Theatre, was its artistic director until 2011, and still serves on the board. He also created Aquila’s education programme at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem and Aquila’s national theatre education programmes.

He is currently Clinical Professor of Classics at New York University. He has published several volumes of translations of Greek comedy and tragedy with Hackett (his translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia was awarded the 2001/2 Louis Galantiere Award). He is a contributor to the Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama.

 
Richard Rawles, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

Richard Rawles was Teaching Associate in Classics at the University of Nottingham from 2011 to 2015, during which time he carried out extensive teaching on Greek tragedy, convening the first-year module Interpreting Ancient Literature and the third-year special subject Suffering on Stage: Approaches to Greek Tragedy, and leading seminars for Euripides: Experiments in Tragedy. See the related studies page.

He is currently Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. Richard’s primary research focus is Greek lyric poetry, and he has also worked on Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

 
Giulia Torello-Hill, University of New England, Australia

Giulia Torello-Hill obtained her PhD, Eupolis and Attic Comedy (supervised by Alan Sommerstein), from the University of Nottingham in 2006. She is a specialist in ancient drama and its reception in the Early Italian Renaissance. She has lectured at Monash University and the University of Queensland in Australia, and was previously the 2015-2016 Fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence.

Her current research focuses on the humanist exegesis of classical dramatic texts, and on the intellectual developments that underpinned the revival of classical theatre at the end of the 15th century. She recently co-edited Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing (2015). She is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
Peter von Möllendorff, Department of Classics, University of Giessen, Germany

Peter von Möllendorff visited the University of Nottingham in 2010. He is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Giessen and works on Greek drama and Imperial literature.

He has published numerous works on Greek drama, including on the Aesthetics of Old Comedy (Grundlagen einer Ästhetik der Alten Komödie. Untersuchungen zu Aristophanes und Michail Bachtin (1995). He is particularly interested in the digital reconstruction of ancient theatre. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Greek Comedy.

 
Ioanna Papodopoulou, Department of Greek Literature, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Ioanna Papadopoulou is the modern Greek translator of Alan Sommerstein’s Greek Drama and Dramatists. She is Assistant Professor of Classics at the Democritus University of Thrace, where she teaches Greek and Roman theatre to undergraduates and postgraduates.

She is working on a translation into modern Greek of Seneca’s Oedipus, and on a monograph entitled Aeschylus on Love.

 
 

Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception

Department of Classics and Archaeology
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0)115 951 4800
fax: +44 (0)115 951 4811
email: Naomi Scott, CADRE Director