Courses
Classics
Introduction to Ancient Greek
Students taking our first Classics course, will be taught using pioneering language-teaching techniques developed in Oxford. In just two weeks you will be taught the foundational elements of Ancient Greek, including the alphabet, vocabulary, principles of reading and translating, and reading extracts of original literature. Texts will be decided in discussion with the group but will include extracts from a range of genres.
By the end of the course, you will be able to read and compose basic sentences in Ancient Greek, understand the principles of reading and translating an inflected ancient language and read extracts from ancient texts themselves.
Course 2
Introduction to Classical Archaeology
Students taking our second course, will explore the practical methods that real archaeologists use to learn more about everyday life in the ancient world. You will take a theoretical look at how we excavate ancient sites – and the challenges presented by the evidence that we do manage to find and then then look at case studies of several sites around the ancient Mediterranean in order to discover what the material evidence alone can tell us about ancient politics, religion, culture, and society.
Course Photos
Subject Tutors
Dr Cressida Ryan,
Faculty of Theology and Religion, Oxford University
Cressida Ryan is Instructor in New Testament Greek at the University of Oxford. She has previously taught at the universities of Cambridge and Nottingham, as well as in schools. She has also worked in university outreach. Her research interests include the reception of Sophocles, Neo-Latin drama, and language pedagogy, particularly the relationship between language teaching and the development of Reformation doctrine, and the role of communicative language teaching in the ancient language classroom.
Dr Tim Smith,
Regent’s Park College, Oxford
Tim Smith is a Roman historian working as Lecturer in Ancient History at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. He studies elections and popular participation in politics in the Roman world. He has worked to excavate Greco-Roman the Graeco-Roman archaeology of northern Sicily since 2019 and is particularly interested in how the built environment of ancient cities reflects how people interacted political elites and engaged with political institutions.
