Staff

The Director of the Institute is responsible to the School and the University; he represents the Institute both at home and abroad, guiding its policies and development in consultation with colleagues to ensure that the Institute fulfils its role in promoting and facilitating research in Classics and related disciplines, nationally and internationally. The Director also serves as General Editor of the Institute's Publications.

Professor Woolf’s research concerns the history and archaeology of the ancient world at the very large scale.Current projects include books on urbanism and on mobility, and ongoing collaborations on ancient library culture with former colleagues in St Andrews. He is an associated fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt where, along with Professor Jörg Rüpke, he  leads a major research project, funded by the Humboldt Foundation, into the role of sanctuaries in forming religious experience.

Professor Woolf sits on the British Museum Research Committee and he chairs the Council of University Classical Departments.

Gabriel Bodard is Reader in Digital Classics at the ICS since September 2015. He has been the organizer of the Digital Classicist seminar since 2006, and teaches classes and workshops on digital methods for classicists and archaeologists as well as summer schools on digital encoding for ancient epigraphy and papyrology internationally.

After a PhD in classics from the University of Reading (dissertation title: "Witches Cursing and Necromancy: representations of 'magic' in classical and archaic Greece") he worked for fourteen years in digital humanities at King's College London, specializing in digital epigraphy and collaborating on several major corpora of inscriptions (Aphrodisias, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Northern Black Sea) and Papyri (Papyri.info) and is a co-author of the EpiDoc Guidelines for XML encoding of ancient documents. He is the principal investigator of the Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies

Digital Classicist profile

Emma Bridges joined the ICS as Public Engagement Fellow in September 2017. After an undergraduate degree in Classics at Oxford, she completed her PhD at the University of Durham. Prior to moving to the ICS Emma was a Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University, where she worked to make classical subjects available to those with a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. She brings to the ICS her experience in making academic research accessible to audiences beyond academia, and to those for whom Classics has not traditionally been available as a course of study, as well as her commitment to fostering conversation and collaboration between academics and wider communities.

Emma’s published research focuses on the ancient and modern receptions of the Persian Wars; her first book, Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King, looks at ways in which Xerxes was reimagined in a variety of ancient literary and historical contexts. She is also responsible for conducting a series of interviews for the online open access journal Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies, with a particular focus on contemporary reworkings of ancient myths. Her current research project brings together her interests in the depiction of armed conflict and the reception of ancient myth by exploring the ways in which the experiences of soldiers’ wives depicted in the Homeric poems and Athenian tragedy relate to those of modern-day ‘military wives’.

Valeria Vitale joined the ICS in January 2017 as a Research Fellow on the A. W. Mellon funded project Pelagios Commons, for which she worked as Community Manager and part of the investigative team. After her degree in Communication Science awarded by La Sapienza University in Rome, she worked for several years on the study and promotion of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with major Italian cultural institutions. In 2012 she graduated with an MA  in Digital Humanities at King’s College London, where she also completed her PhD on the use of Linked Open Data to document 3D visualisations of ancient cultural heritage. Her case study was the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, its variant restoration hypotheses and multiple cultural interpretations. Her doctoral research involved the development of a documentation standard for scholarly 3D visualisation called SCO3CH.

She has an extensive experience in teaching 3D tools and methods to humanists and showing how spatial technologies can enhance the study and understanding of the Past. Valeria has also collaborated with various digital projects that focus on ancient geography, including the Heritage gazetteer of Cyprus, i.Sicily, the Pleiades Gazetteer and  the Heritage Gazetteer of Libya. She co-directed the CALCS (Cross-cultural AfterLife of Classical Sites) project in 2016.

Hannah Cornwell joined the ICS in January 2016 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. She has previously worked as a researcher for The Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project (AshLI), and was a Mougins Museum Rome Awardee at the British School at Rome in 2014.

She received her DPhil in Ancient History from the University of Oxford and is completing a monograph on the role of pax ('peace') in the political climate of the end of the Roman Republic and the creation of the Principate. She has recently published in the Journal of Roman Studies (2015), as well as a number of papers in edited volumes. Her current Leverhulme research project examines the production of space as a means to understanding diplomacy as a social practice in the Roman world.

Caroline Barron joined the ICS on 1 September 2016 as a Research Fellow on the ERC funded project Judaism and Rome, based at the CNRS at the Université Aix-Marseille.  Following an undergraduate degree in English and Latin at the University of Leeds, she spent several years living in Rome and working in cultural heritage. She returned to London in 2008 to pursue an MA in Classics at King's College London, where she also studied for her PhD under the supervision of Professor Henrik Mouritsen. Her thesis was entitled 'Tourists and Texts: Latin Inscriptions in the Grand Tour Collections of Eighteenth Century England', and considered the presence of epigraphical material in private collections. Her research has a particular interest in 'fake' inscriptions, produced for the art market in the eighteenth century, which is the subject of a forthcoming article in the edited volume Fakes, Forgeries and Issues of Authenticity in Classical Literature’ (Brill: forthcoming 2017).

Caroline has also worked on the publication of two digital editions of ancient inscriptions, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania and IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea, and has extensive teaching experience in a wide range of topics including Roman religion, Roman Art, the history of Museums and Latin.

Simona Stoyanova joined the ICS on 6 February 2017 as a Research Fellow in Library and Information Science on the Cataloguing Open Access Classics Serials project (COACS). After a BA in Classical Philology from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Bulgaria, she pursued an MA in Classics and Digital Humanities at King's College London in 2011-12. She has worked in the field of Digital Classics since graduation, starting as a student assistant at KCL on two digital epigraphy projects: Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica and IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea, and as a research assistant on the Sharing Ancient Wisdoms (SAWS) project and the Marie-Curie funded Demetrios of Skepsis project, to produce a prove-of-concept sample of a digital edition of a fragmentary author. In 2013 she joined the Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Leipzig as a research associate on the Open Greek and Latin (OGL) project for digitisation of ancient sources in the public domain as part of the Perseus Digital Library, and on two research projects from the Leipzig Open Fragmentary Text Series (LOFTS): the Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (DFHG) and the Digital Marmor Parium - a published collection of fragments of Ancient Greek historians and a chronology in the form of an inscription. She returned to London in 2016 to work on the IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea project at KCL. She teaches classes and workshops on digital scholarly editing and textual criticism and digital encoding for epigraphy and papyrology, and provides TEI XML and EpiDoc consultancy for digitisation and electronic publishing of Ancient and Mediaeval primary sources. She is a co-author of the EpiDoc Guidelines for XML encoding of ancient documents.

Simona is currently pursuing a part-time PhD in Classics and Digital Humanities at King's College London under the supervision of Dr Peter Stokes and Dr Irene Polinskaya on relations and processes of influence between the Greek and Latin epigraphic traditions in the province of Thrace, and their exploration and presentation through a customised DigiPal framework for epigraphers.

Valerie James was appointed as Institute Manager for the Institute of Classical Studies on 1 September 2014 and has taken on  responsibilities covering both the Institute and the Library.

After undertaking research at Oxford on 17th century French history, she enjoyed a varied administrative career in the public and the not for profit sectors. In 2004 she co-edited the Bede Roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas (the Parish Clerks' fraternity) for the London Record Society, a text which throws light on local, ecclesiastical and musical history. 

She joined the School of Advanced Study in 2006 as Administrator of the Institute of Musical Research, subsequently becoming Consortium Administrative Manager for three Institutes within the School before taking up her current post.

Liz Potter manages the publications programme of the Institute, and is involved in developing web services which will promote and facilitate research in Classics and related disciplines. She oversees all aspects of the delivery of print and digital publications; and she is currently working with a range of partner Institutes on the research and development of a suite of digital services.

Liz’s research lies broadly in the Hellenic tradition. Her first book is a study of British Hellenism from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth: it explores the inspiration and the warning perceived to be offered by classical Athens to modern Britain as it moved towards democracy. Her second research project is a study of rhetoric, performance and emotion in the Greco-Roman world. She teaches Ancient History and Classics in Oxford and Bristol, and also works as a freelance writer and editor.

Joanna Ashe joined the ICS/Joint Library as Librarian in May 2017. She is responsible for day-to-day management of the Library, including the library accommodation and the arrangement of the collection as a whole. She read classics at St Hilda’s College Oxford, and then completed a Masters in Library and Information Science at City University London. She has previously worked at the Royal College of Physicians.

Paul Jackson is the Deputy Librarian.  He is responsible for cataloguing and classifying the Library’s books and liaises with the reviews editors of the Hellenic and Roman Societies’ journals regarding review books requested and received by the Library.  He administers the Library’s Rare Book collection in its new Suite, material ranging from a 1501 edition of Livy to books annotated by Michael Ventris.   He is the contact point for Health and Safety matters in the Institute and represents the Institute on the SAS Health and Safety Committee.  He also represents the Library on the London Byzantine Sub-Committee and edits its twice-yearly book-list, which coordinates the acquisition of Byzantine material in London.  He read Classics at Magdalene College Cambridge, before a year as a SCONUL trainee at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship at Newcastle Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria).

Sue Willetts is the Senior Library Assistant with responsibility for circulation and reader services, including electronic resources, and assists with updating the library’s webpage.  She is currently the chair of the Staff Training Group for the University’s Graduate Trainee programme. She studied at the University of Sheffield, reading Ancient History / Classical Civilisation as an undergraduate. She then took a Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship at The College of Librarianship Wales (CLW) in Aberystwyth, which included a period of work experience. She was very pleased to be able to spend this time in the ICS / Joint Library when it was based in Gordon Square. Her first library post was in a Polytechnic’s business and law library where she became a Subject Librarian, during which time she studied part time for MSc in Information Systems and Technology at London’s City University. She returned to the ICS Library in 1990 as a Library Assistant. In more recent years, she studied for an MA in Classical Studies with the Open University, with a final dissertation on Costume in Aristophanic comedy. Her interests in the Classical world are wide ranging and include Greek tragedy and comedy, especially modern performances, Greek vase painting and the history and archaeology of Roman Britain.

Christopher joined the staff of the Institute of Classical Studies Library in June 2009 as Periodicals Library Assistant.  His main responsibilities include the day-to-day administration of the Library’s periodical collection, and maintaining a programme of publication exchanges with libraries, museums, universities, professional associations and individual scholars across the world.  He also enjoys assisting the Library’s readers while staffing the enquiry desk.  After graduating in History from Worcester College Oxford, Christopher completed a Masters qualification in Information and Library Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth.  Thereafter he enjoyed working in a variety of academic and specialist libraries, including the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society and the University of London Library (now Senate House Library).

Flor Herrero Valdes is a part time Library Assistant of the ICS/Joint Library, as from October 2014. Her main responsibility is the binding of the Periodicals and providing assistance to the Periodicals Library Assistant, Christopher Ashill.  She studied Classics as an undergraduate, at the University of Granada, Spain, and has recently completed her PhD, at the University of Malaga, Spain. Her dissertation is entitled “Edition, translation and commentary of the Greek Magical Hymns”. She specializes in late Antiquity Poetics, Mystery Religions, Mythology and Magic, and Greek Papyrology.