We are delighted to welcome Professor Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies) to Aberdeen, to deliver the 2024 Geddes-Harrower-Lectures in Greek Art and Archaeology.

Over four free, public lectures, taking place on the University’s Old Aberdeen campus (AB24 3FX), Professor Harloe will speak about:

A Potted History of Classics from the Margins

The lectures will reconsider the history of Classics and Classical Archaeology, recovering lost voices that shaped the discipline decisively. The lectures will explore the significance of class, race, sexuality and gender for the shaping of Classics – identities and categories that already haunted the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founding father of modern Altertumswissenschaft.

In revisiting the discipline’s history, the lectures also ask for the place of classical learning in today’s academia and society, questions that are of renewed urgency as the sector ponders about the future of the humanities.

1. Decline and Fall? (13 February 2024, 6pm. King’s Conference Centre

2. Winckelmann's Love Letters (15 February 2024, 6pm, New King’s 01)

3. "Beyond Notability": Women in Archaeology (19 February 2024, 6pm, New King’s 01)

4. Classics and Humanities in the 21st Century (21 February 2024, 6pm, King’s Conference Centre)

All lectures are free and open to the public. Lecture 1 and 4 are followed by a wine reception.

The Geddes-Harrower-Chair in Greek Art and Archaeology was established through a bequest by John Harrower (1857-1933), Professor of Greek at Aberdeen. It is named in honour of Harrower and his father-in-law (and predecessor as Professor of Greek) William Geddes. The Geddes-Harrower-Chair is a visiting Professorship and has brought, over the last sixty years, some of the most renowned historians of Greek Art to Aberdeen. Previous Geddes-Harrower Professors include Bernard Ashmole, Robin Osborne, Brunilde S. Ridgway, Mary Beard and Milette Gaifman.