Cross-cultural encounters

Cross-cultural encounters

Including: identity and ethnicity; archaeology of pre- and early Roman Italy; multilingualism and code-switching; Latin and vernacular languages; the heroic tradition.

Staff areas of focus include:

• Dr Jacopo Bisagni: Latin and Old Irish bilingualism; interactions between Late Antique, Irish, Breton and Carolingian scholarship.
• Prof. Michael Clarke: linguistic and cultural transfer from Graeco-Roman Antiquity to medieval vernacular literatures, especially Middle Irish; comparative study of epic poetry, including the traditions of Greek, Latin, Near Eastern languages.
• Dr Edward Herring: history and archaeology of southern Italy with special reference to the study of the relations between the Greek, Roman and native communities; south Italian pottery; the Iron Age and Classical cultures of Italy, with special reference to state formation, ethnicity and identity.
• Dr Pádraic Moran: reception of Latin educational texts in early medieval Ireland; comparative study of Classical and vernacular traditions, particularly between Europe and East Area.

Current researchers

Postdoctoral researchers:

• Dr Vittorio Danovi: the Philargyrian corpus and its medieval Irish reception.
• Dr Jasmim Drigo: loanwords in the Old Irish glosses.
• Dr Nicolai Egjar Engesland is studying the influence of Latin grammatical theory on the Irish linguistic tradition.
• Dr Christian Schweizer: Irish and Carolingian influences in the works of Dicuil.
• Dr Mary Sweeney: the reception of Priscian's Latin grammar in western Europe.

PhD researchers:

• Andrew Levie: narratives of Antiquity in Spenser's Faerie Queene.
• Luke McDermott: metaphor in the language of prophecy between ancient Assyria and later European traditions.

Completed research

Postdoctoral researchers:

• Dr Ciaran Arthur: Classical, biblical, vernacular and divine language in the early English intellectual tradition. 

PhD researchers:

• Dr Micheál Geoghegan: inter-generational tensions in classical Athens.
• Dr Eóin O'Donoghue: representation of gender in the material culture of archaic Etruria. (In 2022, Dr O'Donoghue took a new position as Assistant Professor of Ancient Classics in Brandeis University.)
• Dr Érin McKinney: Latin–Irish code-switching in early Irish hagiography.
• Dr Anastasia Remoundou-Howley: contemporary Irish versions of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. (Dr Remoundou-Howley is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Galway.)
• Dr Mary Sweeney: fragmentary Jewish texts in the Hellenistic world.