Annual Research Theme

The Department’s Annual Research Theme encourages the exploration of innovative subjects emerging at the intersection of two or more members of research staff working in relatively diverse areas, and aims to be an engine for creating new agendas through fresh subdisciplinary collaborations. We normally reserve a number of slots from the Department’s Research Seminar for the theme, and provide funding for a dedicated international conference. The Research Theme is ultimately directed towards publication, often in association with postdoctoral researchers, visitors and graduate students. A series of edited collections has appeared with OUP, CUP, de Gruyter and Brill.

Annual Research Theme 2024/25: Aristotle Beyond the Academy

Conference: Explorations in the Public Reception of Aristotle (Durham, 26 and 27 March 2025).

There will be sessions on Literature and Art, Race, Politics, Rhetoric and Poetics. Confirmed speakers include: Sara Monoson (Northwestern), Fran O'Rourke (UCD), Margaret Doody (Notre Dame), Henry Stead (St Andrews), David Bullen (Royal Holloway), Richard Toye (Exeter), Hatice Nur Erkizan (MUĞLA), Ashley Lance (Cambridge), Christopher Anaforian (St Andrews), Patrice Rankine (Chicago), Rhiannon Easterbrook (ICS) and Natalie Earl. We will also be joined by novelist Margaret Doody (Notre Dame).

Seminars

16 October 2024: Edith Hall (Durham) Aristotle in British Debates on the Constitution, Slavery, and Women

6 November 2024: Sophia Connell (Birkbeck) Aristotle, analytic philosophy and the birth of virtue ethics

11 December 2024: Alessandro Vatri (Durham) Aristotle and the Orators in Margaret Doody's Fourth-Century Athens

21 May 2025: Rory McInnes-Gibbons (Durham) Aristotle's Masterpiece, a seventeenth-century sex manual

Previous annual research themes:

• Syriac Studies (2023/24)
• Classical Presences in the North East (2022/23)