Critical Ancient World Studies

“In its collectivity and variety, its effortful interdisciplinarity, and its self-annotating, self-critical practice, this exciting collection of papers represents part of a wider sea change occurring across ancient world studies. The contributions to the volume are refreshingly direct, clearly written, and, as an open access publication, available to anyone interested in its approaches. Critical Ancient World Studies is a generative, thought-provoking text. Iterative application of the critical mechanism at its core will guarantee even more field-expanding work in the years to come.” - Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Mathura Umachandran is a Tamil scholar from London, trained at Oxford and Princeton in classics. They teach ancient Greek at the University of Exeter and dream of ways of making more just knowledge.

Marchella Ward (Chella) has been Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University since September 2022, when she left Oxford to go in search of a more egalitarian approach to the study of the ancient world. Before that she was the Tinsley Outreach Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford, where she split her time equally between postdoctoral research in classical reception and work to oppose the inequalities, inequities and biases that structure access to higher education. Her research has focused on disability justice and classical reception and on attempts to find non-hierarchical, non-hegemonic and non-linear ways to figure ancient influence. Her writing has appeared in the Classical Receptions Journal, the Classical Review, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement and across various blogs and other open access platforms.