British School at Athens

January 19, 2026

Victorians and Modern Greece: Literary and Cultural Encounters – Book presentation

The event features three talks presenting the book Victorians and Modern Greece: Literary and Cultural Encounters recently published by Routledge in the British School at Athens—Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies Series. The volume examines the representation and interpretation of nineteenth century Greece in Victorian magazines, popular fiction, poetry, and travel writing, revealing the cultural affiliations between Britain and Modern Greece in this period. It reflects…

December 15, 2025

Dr Lorenzo Calvelli (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), “A View from Athens. Reassessing Cyriac of Ancona’s Vita and Commentaria”

This lecture will explore the manuscript tradition and the discoveries of Cyriac of Ancona, the fifteenth-century Italian humanist, merchant and traveller who is often regarded as the earliest pioneer of modern epigraphy and archaeology. It will first trace the history of Cyriac’s Commentaria de rebus antiquis — a vast corpus…

December 8, 2025

Archaeology in the Ottoman Aegean: Consuls – Culture – Commerce

How did local communities contribute to archaeology in the 19th and early 20th centuries? What were the connections between Ottoman officials, international diplomats, and competing curators? And what was the role of the antiquities market in stimulating intellectual developments? These are some of the questions this panel discussion will explore, bringing together historians and archaeologists to discuss the relationship between…

December 1, 2025

Ben Cassell (BSA/King’s College London), “The Aiora and Thesmophoria: Cognitve, embodied and psychological approaches”

Recent years have seen an increasing application of models derived from the cognitive sciences to the study of ancient religious experience. In particular, specific models are being drawn from the theoretically pluralist field of the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) in order…

November 10, 2025

Professor Nicoletta Momigliano (University of Bristol), “Mal d’Archive/Archive Fever (some reflections on Sinclair Hood’s archive at the British School at Athens)”

This lecture presents some reflections stemming from current research on the Royal Road excavations that were carried out by Sinclair Hood at Knossos between 1957 and 1961. The focus is on the rich Hood Archive, which was recently moved from his home in Oxford…

November 3, 2025

Professor Polly Low (Durham University), “Towards a new history of ancient Greek empire(s)”

Can we talk of ’empire’ when studying the behaviour of Greek states in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE? Does using this terminology clarify or obscure our understanding of how states and individuals behaved, and how they understood their behaviour? These questions…

October 30, 2025

Dr Angela Paine, “Healing Plants of Greek Myth”

There are numerous references to plants used by goddesses and gods to heal or enchant, within Greek Myth, and the names of many of these plants have been incorporated into the Latin binomials that are used to identify them. The first physicians…

October 22, 2025

Writing Greece: An evening with Sofka Zinovieff and Julian Hoffman

Neither Julian Hoffman nor Sofka Zinovieff are originally from Greece and yet they’ve both devoted a large part of their careers to writing and thinking about this country. Between them, they’ve explored it in novels, nonfiction, short stories, podcasts and essays. One lives in Athens, the other in Prespa…

October 13, 2025

Mosaics: an enduring imprint of materiality. Christina Nakou in conversation with Rebecca Sweetman

Based on the ancient technique of mosaics, the conversation between the Director of the BSA Prof Rebecca Sweetman (expert on ancient mosaics) and Visual Artist Christina Nakou approaches concepts such as making, wear, durability, corporeality and transformation to highlight the importance of the inclusion…

October 6, 2025

Poetry Readings: Michael Marks Awards – Ben Verinder (Environmental Poet of the Year 2024) and Professor Paul O’Prey (winner of the Publisher Award 2024 – Dare Gale press)

The BSA is delighted to host the Michael Marks Awards and its winning poets who stay at the BSA for a week as part of the programme. This year’s poets in residence are Ben Verinder, the Environmental Poet of the Year 2024, and Professor Paul O’Prey, winner of the Publisher Award 2024 (Dare- Gale press), who will give readings at the BSA Upper House.

Upper House Seminars