Classics and Ancient History projects

Jolly old St Nick has a long history of crossing borders, and not just on Christmas Eve…

Senior Lecturer in Greek History and Language from The University of Queensland Dr Amelia Brown has been working on uncovering the ‘real’ St Nicholas for the past few years, and shares some snapshots from the ancient and medieval travels of the Greek Agios Nikolaos, better known as Santa Claus.

On January 6, just a few short months ago, 25 students of Ancient History, Archaeology, Education, Museum Studies and Art History from UQ met up with UQ Senior Lecturer Dr Amelia R. Brown and recent UQ Classics PhD Dr Annabel Florence in Athens, Greece.

This project will both locate, research, and publish information about antiquities brought back as souvenirs by Queensland service personnel during the First World War and tell the stories of the service men and women who collected them.

In ancient democratic Athens a funeral oration was delivered annually in honour of the war dead. For the Athenian people it was a vitally important speech, because it reminded them who they were as a democratic society and why they continued to wage back-to-back wars in which their sons died in appalling numbers.

This project led by Dr Keenan-Jones centres on human-environment interaction in the ancient Mediterranean.