Head of Department (September 2024); Deputy Director (Arts & Humanities), Institute of Advanced Studies
Email: p.vasunia@ucl.ac.uk
Office hours: Fridays, 11 am to noon, and by appointment
Research interests: Imperialism and colonialism, the Classical tradition, cross-cultural interaction in antiquity, the relationship between prose and poetry
Phiroze Vasunia has written on a range of texts and periods, from antiquity to the modern era, and has research interests in the study of cross-cultural contact, colonialism, and empire. His interest in cross-cultural research is reflected in the project on Comparative Classics: Greece, Rome, and India, of which he is the principal convener. He is the co-author of Postclassicisms (2019) and the author of The Gift of the Nile (2001) and The Classics and Colonial India (2013). He is the editor of several books, including two forthcoming volumes, Classics and Race: An Historical Reader (with Sarah Derbew and Daniel Orrells) and The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire (with Daniel L. Selden). He is also the general editor of the book series Ancients and Moderns, published by Bloomsbury. Work in progress includes a book on postcolonialism & antiquity.
Professor Vasunia teaches in the Department of Greek and Latin and in the Programme in Comparative Literature. He is Deputy Director (Arts & Humanities) of the Institute of Advanced Studies at UCL. In 2023-24, he is teaching Plato's Symposium (GREK0062) and Race: Antiquity and its Legacy (CLAS0160/CLAS0161) and co-ordinating Approaches to Classics (CLAS0168).
Books
- The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire (Oxford); ed. with D. L. Selden. In progress, here.
- Hellenistic Literature and Culture; ed. with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne
- The Politics of Form in Greek Literature (London, 2022); ed.
- Postclassicisms (Chicago, 2019); co-author
- The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford, 2013)
- Classics and National Cultures (Oxford, 2010); ed. with S. A. Stephens
- India, Greece, and Rome, 1757 to 2007, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplements, 108 (London, 2010); ed. with Edith Hall
- The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford, 2009); ed. with G. Boys-Stones & B. Graziosi
- Zarathushtra and the Religion of Ancient Iran: The Greek and Latin Sources in Translation (Mumbai, 2007)
- The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander (Berkeley, 2001)
For a longer list of publications, please see the UCL Profile here.