ICS Practitioner in Residence

The Institute of Classical Studies has an opportunity for a practitioner interested in working collaboratively with classical researchers and the resources of the ICS and Combined Classics Library to spend April/May to July 2023 in residence at the Institute. We are open to receiving applications from practitioners in any field, including cultural heritage; film, television and radio; theatre; any kind of literary or visual practice; digital content development (apps, game or exhibition development); and other creative arts, including artists working in mixed media.  We are particularly keen to support a practitioner who is interested in exploring the potential of creative practice for surfacing and rendering visible hidden or marginalised voices and perspectives from the classical past and its reception.

The practitioner will receive a stipend of £1000 per month and will be supported to develop their own practice, explore connections with classical studies and classicists, and share their work with different audiences. This residency forms part of the wider School of Advanced Study Practitioner in Residence programme and so offers the additional opportunity to work alongside practitioners embedded in other disciplinary communities at the same time. All practitioners will have access to a shared working space (the Fellows’ Room in Senate House) while visiting the School, as well as full access to the Institute’s resources and infrastructure including the Combined Classics Library and its special collections, its academic seminars, workshops and conferences, and a range of on-going research projects, and academics. Applications are welcome from across the UK and may be held as an in person or hybrid residency. The successful practitioner will be expected to actively engage with the Institute, but practitioners will at all times be free to conduct their residency as they see fit.

The Institute of Classical Studies is based in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. Founded in 1953, the ICS is the UK’s national centre for the study of the languages, literature, history, material and visual culture, and thought of the ancient Mediterranean world. It acts as a home and anchor institution for classicists across the UK and international subject community, maintains an internationally renowned research library in association with the Hellenic and Roman Societies, hosts several disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects as well as an active programme of seminars, workshops and conferences, and is the meeting place of the main Classics organisations in the UK. It is a member institute of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Some further details about the ICS collections, upcoming events and activities are given below.

Application for the residency is by submission of a CV and a short statement (max. 1,000 words). This should include a description of the work you would bring to the Institute, which can take any form and shape and must engage in some way with the ancient world, classical scholarship and/or classical reception. You should explain how the ICS residency will help the development of your work, and how you will contribute to the intellectual life of the Institute during the residency.

Applications should be submitted to Joanna Ashe, Librarian of the Combined Classics Library: joanna.ashe(at)sas.ac.uk. Deadline for applications: 12 noon on Monday 27th March 2023.

Further details about the ICS collections, upcoming events and activities:

The Combined Library of the Institute of Classical Studies and the Hellenic and Roman Library is one of the world’s great libraries for the study of Greco-Roman Antiquity. The collection has been built up for nearly 150 years and now numbers around 160,000 books and bound periodicals, mostly available on the open shelves. The library has an active digitisation programme (though please note that the majority of our collection is still undigitised and can only be accessed on site). In addition to the resources on the open shelves the practitioner will also have access to:

•    Our special collections – around 2,000 volumes published before 1800
•    A collection of antiquities, mostly Hellenistic ceramics, bequeathed to the Institute by Victor Ehrenberg in the 1970s
•    Archive collections held by the library  and the Institute, including:
     o    Wood (Robert, c1717-1771) et al.  (https://library.ics.sas.ac.uk/wood-collection): Diaries and sketch books of Robert Wood, James Dawkins, John Bouverie and Giovanni Battista Borra of a tour of the Levant, 1750-1751
     o    Bent, Theodore (1852-97) and Mabel (née Hall-Dare, 1847-1929): 25 diaries and notebooks of James Theodore and Mabel Virginia Anna Bent, 1883-1898
     o    Connolly, Peter (1935-2012): Archaeologist and illustrator. 53 notebooks dated between 1970 and 2006 and 55 photo albums.
     o    David J Smith Mosaic archive: books, periodicals, pamphlets, photographs and slides, representing the residue of a lifetime's research on ancient mosaics by David Smith, one of the foremost authorities on Roman mosaics.

ICS is the host of Beyond Notability, an AHRC-funded project devoted to investigating and rendering visible women’s contributions to archaeology, history and heritage work (including classical scholarship) in late 19th and early 20th century Britain.
In summer 2023 our academic staff will also be actively engaged in knowledge exchange work exploring creative and practitioner-led approaches to investigating Caribbean collections histories in the context of the British Museum; exploring and promoting the power of community-based and inclusive theatre arts for social impact (partner: Chickenshed Theatre); directing archaeological excavations at the site of Falerii Novi in Italy; and actively using the library collections in the SAS Digital Humanities Research Hub MakerSpace and in teaching and training.

Please check the ICS events pages for an overview of some of our regular events and activities, and those planned for the summer.