Greek and Latin ChangeMakers

Over the last few years, Department of Greek and Latin has hosted an annual Student Speaker Series, under the rubric ‘Beyond the Mediterranean’.  The purpose of this event is to explore ways in which we can meaningfully and practically diversify and broaden the Classics curriculum at UCL . Begun as a UCL Changemakers project in 2021, since 2022 the Speaker Series has been a part of a collaborative staff-student partnership, funded by the UCL Centre for Humanities Education, whose aim has been to develop practical outlets addressing some embedded inequalities within the discipline of Classics.  

For the event, which is hosted and organised by students themselves, student presenters are given free rein to explore ideas and themes neglected by or beyond the limits of the traditional Classics curriculum and to present their research to an audience of peers and staff.   Discussions have been wide-ranging and have sparked fascinating connections between topics such as Sumerian literature, mythology in video games, the reception of Ancient Rome in Indian film,  how economic history can challenge the received understanding of Roman women, and Medusa as queer heroine. The event provides a valuable forum outside of the formal degree programme structure, where staff and students can reflect as fellow practitioners on the possibilities, limits, approaches, methodological issues, and new challenges of an expanded or more inclusive vision of Classics.  And as an opportunity for students to present their own original research, it has been one of the most inspiring initiatives of recent years within the department and has led staff to consider how they can incorporate aspects of this expanded and collaborative conception of the study of the ancient world into our teaching, for example within our new BA methodologies module. 

2025 saw the fourth annual iteration of the Student Speaker series, in Term 2, organised by Diya Dasgupta and Poppy Shortmoor. The theme of the 2025 series, chosen by Diya and Poppy, was: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it: Reflections on the modern world through a classical lens’ . The focus was on drawing unexpected or underexplored parallels between the classical and the contemporary worlds. The event took place over two separate afternoons. Students presented intriguing, well-researched talks on broad topics that challenged the conventional Classics curriculum, with a particular focus on gender and on contemporary global politics. For example, Michelle Kazi presented a fascinating account of her time as an advisor to British political parties, drawing striking parallels with the internecine conflicts at the end of the Roman Republic, in her talk: ‘History’s Oldest Lesson: No Party, No Empire, No Power Lasts Forever’. Taking a global perspective, Abdullah Arab and Alexia Evans made thought-provoking comparisons between modern and ancient instances of what we now call ‘genocide’ in ‘How do modern persecutions betray the forgotten lessons of antiquity?’ 

Discussions after each of the talks were reflective and thoughtful, demonstrating how our students continue to engage with the ancient world not only as history that has profoundly shaped the world we live in today, but also as a malleable tool that can help us to think through present-day questions and concerns. 

Watch: Reyna Jani, “Female Sexuality: The Obscurification of Female Same-Sex Relations within Classics”

• Collected materials prepared by the speaker for their mini lectures, including PowerPoints, handouts, and reading lists, have been made available to members of the Departmental teaching staff. These resources will be used in the future to implement such neglected topics in existing modules and improve the diversity of the Greek and Latin curriculum.
• Both by giving the talks and by participating in the discussion, students showed to be committed to increasing and improving diversity in the curriculum and made excellent and persuasive cases for why questions about gender, race, and sexuality should be included in the syllabi.