Overview
With a background in Classics, History (and particularly history of religion), my prime interest is in education as a social praxis and the discourse of knowledges and knowers. My recent research and practice centres on Interdisciplinarity (chiefly through the recent UCL Interdisciplinary 'Evidence Programme').
Within CALT, I am acting Programme Leader for the MA Education and also the now-closed Academic Practice as well as Graduate Tutor for the Department, and module leader for courses on Quality, Consistency and Cost-Effectiveness, Policy and Perspectives and modules concerned with Academic Practice (Professionalism in the Academic Community and Higher Education and Academic Identity). Like many CALT staff, I have been a tutor on our module Exploring Learning in Higher Education and for the Graduate School I run a course for graduate students on Interdisciplinarity Studies of Evidence.
I also maintain our wiki and maintain a number of UCL email lists: I recently took over running the Interdisciplinary Evidence email list; I also maintain user groups (iPhone, LaTeX) and a History of Medicine list).
Academic Interests
My abiding academic interest is in publicly contested knowledge systems: beginning with ancient Roman religion and historiography, I have moved to a general interest in interdisciplinarity, a complex discourse that focusses more on process and communication than 'results'. It profoundly implicates academic identity and the constructed nature of knowledge. To this end, I am engaged in writing a book, jointly with Professor Stephen Rowland on Talking Across the Disciplines, based largely on our collaboration in the UCL Interdisciplinary Programme on Evidence.
Publications
In print:- Rome’s Religious History: Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
- 'Religion in Historiography' in The Cambridge Companion to Roman Historiography (ed. Andrew Feldherr) (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
- 'Interdisciplinarity – a worm's-eye view' in Collaborative Working in Higher Education: The Social Academy (ed. Dr Lorraine Walsh and Dr Peter Kahn - forthcoming)
In preparation
- 'History: Believing the Evidence' in Evidence, Inference and Enquiry (ed. Professor Philip Dawid, Professor William Twining and Mimi Vasilaki) as a Proceedings of the British Academy (forthcoming)
- 'Interdisciplinarity' in idem
- Talking Across the Disciplines: a Case Study of Interdisciplinarity (with Professor Stephen Rowland) - forthcoming book, expected 2010
- Whose Dream is it Anyway? historical monograph, expected 2011
Selected Talks
- October 2008 ```Gloves off'': ``religion'', ``belief'' and discourse -- a polemic on deprecating Cicero's ``De Diuinatione", St Andrews Research Seminar
- July 2008 `Thinking Inside the Box: Disciplinarity, culture, -isms, problems/solutions and Education', Critical Realism and Education, Institute of Education
- April 2008 `Interdisciplinarity & Teaching: After the Leverhulme Evidence Project', Teaching and Learning Conference, UCL
- Dec 2007 `Foucault's Tourist: Interdisciplinarity', Enquiry, Evidence and Facts: An Interdisciplinary Conference, British Academy
- Dec 2007 ```Not like Us"; the real problem with old alterity', Evidence Research Satellite Meeting (Evidence, Inference and Enquiry: Towards an Integrated Science and Evidence), UCL
- Dec 2007 `Evidence: a Case Study of Interdisciplinarity', UCL Evidence Research Satellite Meeting, UCL
- July 2006 `Postmodernism: an Introduction', Debates in Higher Education (CALT, UCL)
- May 2006 `Travelling Prejudice: `Belief and Religion', LSE Interdisciplinary Programme on \textit{Evidence}
- June 2005 `The Failure of Knowledge: The Place of Ignorance (an Anthropological Perspective)', Evidence Programme, UCL
- Nov 2004 `Interdisciplinarity' (with Stephen Rowland), Evidence Programme, UCL
- Oct 2004 `The Trouble With Prediction', Evidence Programme, UCL
- June 2004 `The Risks the Romans Ran', Provost's Dinner, UCL
Full list of Reviews
- Review article: C.M.C. Green Roman Religion and the cult of Diana at Aricia and C.E. Schultz, and Paul B. Harvey jr Religion in Republican Italy, Journal of Roman Studies 99, (2009)
- J. Scheid (2005) `Quand faire, c'est croire. Les Rites sacrificiels des Romains', (Paris), Classical Review (2008), 58
- Marie-Laurence Haack (2003) Les haruspices dans le monde romain (Paris), Journal of Roman Studies, 97 (2007)
- B. Näf (2004) Traum und Traumdeutung im Altertum (Darmstadt), Clasical Review (forthcoming)
- G. Hart (2000) Asclepius, the god of medicince, (London), Medical History 47 (3) (July 2003)
- I. Gradel (2002) Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford), JACT Review 33 (Summer 2003)
- R. Valantasis (ed.) (2000) Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (Oxford), Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003)
- H.-F. Mueller (2002) Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (Routledge), Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003)
- H. W. Benario (ed. & tr.) (1999) Tacitus' `Germany' (Warminster) & J. B. Rives (ed. & tr.) (1999) Tacitus' Germania (Oxford), Phoenix 2001.4
- J. A. North (2000) Roman Religion (Oxford: Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 30), JACT Review 30 (Autumn 2001)
- E. Craik (2000) Hippocrates: Places in Man (Oxford), JACT Review 30 (Autumn 2001)
- T. E. H. Harrison (2000) Divinity and History: the Religion of Herodotus (Oxford), JACT Review 30 (Autumn 2001)
- J. Gould (2001) Myth, Ritual Memory, and Exchange: Essays in Greek Literature and Culture (Oxford), JACT Review 30 (Autumn 2001)
- K. Dowden (2000) European Paganism: the Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (London & NY), JACT Review 30 (Autumn 2001)
- G. E. R. Lloyd (1999) Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Bristol: : reissue of 1983 edition by Cambridge University Press), JACT Review 29 (Summer 2001)
- J. F. Healy (1999) Pliny The Elder on Science and Technology (Oxford), JACT Review 29 (Summer 2001)
- M. Edwards, M. Goodman & S. Price (eds) (1999) Apologetics in the Roman Empire (Oxford), BMCR 00.07.07
- R. Ash (1999) Ordering Anarchy: Armies and Leaders in Tacitus' Histories (London), BMCR 00.05.21
- V. Rosenberger (1998) Gezähmte Götter: Das Prodigienwesen der römischen Republik (Stuttgart 1998), Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000)
- D. Felton (1999) Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin, Texas), Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000)
- N. Morley (1999) Writing Ancient History (London), JACT Review 27 (Summer 2000)
- M. Grant (1999) The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire (London & New York), JACT Review 27 (Summer 2000)
- R. Miles (1999) Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London & New York), JACT Review 27 (Summer 2000)
- B. Levick (1999) Vespasian (London & New York), JACT Review 27 (Summer 2000)
- R. Mellor (1999) The Roman Historians (London & New York), BMCR 99.6.24
- A. J. Woodman (1998) Tacitus Reviewed (Oxford), BMCR 99.7.22
- T. P. Wiseman (1998) Roman Drama and Roman History (Exeter), JACT Review 1999
- A. Feldherr (1998) Spectacle and Society in Livy's History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London), JACT Review 1999
- F. Graf (1997) Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge Mass.), JACT Review 1999
- E. Orlin (1997) Temples, Politics and Religion in Republican Rome (Leiden), BMCR 99.1.11
- J. Rabinowitz (1998) The Rotting Witch (New York), BMCR 98.5.11
- T. Habinek & A. Schiesaro (eds) (1997) The Roman Cultural Revolution (Cambridge), JACT Review 1998
- W. Hansen (ed.) (1996) The Amazing Stories of Phlegon of Tralles (Exeter), BMCR 97.5.8
- P. G. Walsh (1996) Livy XL (Warminster), BMCR 96.12.13