Ida Toth is a historian of late antique and medieval literary (and textual) culture working in the Greek, Latin, and Slavonic linguistic areas. She convenes graduate courses in Medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and Byzantine Epigraphy, and she supervises master and doctoral students in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. Dr Toth's external appointments include charing the the International Commission for Byzantine Epigraphy and the Membership Board of the British Committee for Byzantine Studies. She is a co-editor of the series Studies in Byzantine Epigraphy (Brepols). Dr Toth has been awarded an Einstein Berlin-Oxford Visiting Fellowship for the project ‘The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History’ (2024-27).

Frédérique Duyrat studied at Sorbonne University in Paris for her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She graduated with an MA in 1996, then spent two years at the French Archaeological Institute in Damascus where she wrote a PhD on Aradus, the most northern Phoenician city, during the Hellenistic period. She took her PhD in 2000 at Sorbonne University, and then was awarded a Habilitation à diriger des recherches by the same university in 2010 for her work Wealth and Warfare. The Archaeology of Money in Ancient Syria. She taught Ancient History at Sorbonne University, then at the University of Orléans where she was also a member of the Institut de recherche sur les archéomatériaux – Centre Ernest-Babelon (CNRS), a laboratory specialized in elemental analyses of the metal of coins (2002-2013). In 2010, she was appointed curator of Greek coins in the department of Coins, Medals, and Antiques of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, before taking the position of director of this department in September 2013. She was appointed to her current post at the University of Oxford in September 2023. At the same time, she is the Director of Studies in the Monetary History of the Greek World (7th-1st century BC) at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.

Alessia Zubani is a Newton International Fellow in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and a Research Associate at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research explores the history of technology in the late antique and medieval Middle East and its importance as a fundamental element in political and royal ideologies of power. The role played by mechanical devices, from automata to talking statues and water clocks, in the practices of definition and legitimation of the political authority, is her primary focus. She holds a joint PhD in History and Cultural Heritage Studies from the École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL, France, and the University of Bologna, Italy (2020). In 2021, her dissertation received the Prix de thèse de la Chancellerie de Paris and the Prix de thèse PSL. Previously, she has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Bologna (2021), the Excellence Research Cluster HASTEC in Paris (2021-2022), and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2022-2023).

I have previously been a school teacher, Classics outreach officer, Schools Liaison and Access Officer, and Instructor in New Testament Greek. I am currently a disability advisor, and lector / tutor in New Testament Greek. I am currently writing a monograph on Luther's Latin translation of the New Testament, for Amsterdam University Press. I am also co-mentoring officer for the Women's Classical Committee UK, and co-editor for the Council of University Classics Departments Bulletin. Outside of work, I am a cadet officer, and keen singer, baker, swimmer, and paddlesports enthusiast.

Liam McNamara is Keeper (Senior Curator) of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum and Associate Professor of Egyptology. He was previosuly the Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan and lead curator on the redevelopment of the Ashmolean’s permanent galleries for ancient Egypt and Sudan which opened in November 2011. He also served as Director of the Griffith Institute (the University of Oxford’s research centre for Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies) from 2015–2019. Prior to his appointment at the the Ashmolean in 2010, Liam was a Project Curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum. Liam is Assistant Director of the Ashmolean’s Expeditions to Hierakonpolis and Elkab in Egypt. He has worked as an archaeological illustrator and field archaeologist on excavations at Kom Firin in the western Nile Delta (directed by Neal Spencer) and at Hierakonpolis in southern Egypt (directed by Renée Friedman). He has also worked on an epigraphic survey of sites in northern Sudan with the British Museum (directed by Vivian Davies). His research interests centre on the archaeology and material culture of ancient Egypt and Sudan, with a specilaism in the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods (late 4th–early 3rd millennium BC), for which the Ashmolean holds the most significant collections anywhere in the world outside Egypt.

Meron Piotrkowski joined the University of Oxford in the fall of 2023. He earned his BA from the Freie Universität Berlin (his hometown), and his MA and PhD from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before coming to Oxford, he spent the last two years at Princeton University and at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.

Michael Shenkar is an Associate Professor of Pre-Islamic Iranian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His specialization is the study of civilizations and cultures of the pre-Islamic Iranian world through their material remains and visual representations. He is a co-director of the excavations of the Sogdian town of Sanjar-Shah (5th-9th centuries CE) in northern Tajikistan.

Title: Divine Kinship at the Assyrian Royal Court



Between the ninth and seventh centuries BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire came to encompass much of the area referred to today as the Middle East. Bearing witness to this expansion, the excavated material remains – palace reliefs, monumental sculptures, and tiny seals – reveal a complex and ever-evolving iconography of Assyrian rulership. While studies of the underpinning ideology have traditionally focused on the subject of kingship, this presentation situates the king within a broader system of interconnected figures, including the queen as well as the crown prince, proposing that their public personas were all implicated in the overarching expression of sanctified, royal authority.

My research focuses on the poetics and politics of Greek poetry from the archaic period to the Hellenistic world. I’m particularly interested in rethinking traditional narratives of literary history, an aspiration which is reflected in the two main strands of my current research: first, I explore the (dis)continuities between the intertextual practices of archaic/classical poets and those of later literary cultures; and second, I aim to unearth the distinctive aesthetics and priorities of Hellenistic poets located beyond Ptolemaic Alexandria. I’ve recently completed a book on Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and I am now working on Hellenistic epic fragments. I'm also co-editing three volumes, the first on collaboration and ancient literature, the second on the relationship of Pergamon and Rome, and the third on Hellenistic aesthetics. ​I teach a wide variety of classical subjects across Greek and Latin Languages and Literature. For more information on my research, publications and teaching, please see my website.

First degree in Classics followed by Sanskrit with Old Iranian at St Hugh's College, Oxford. Joined Wolfson College as graduate student in 1973. JRF at St Hugh's College 1975-78. DPhil 1979 supervised by Anna Morpurgo Davies. 1974-2018 responsible for teaching Oxford University classes in Old Iranian (Old Persian and Avestan). Also classes in Rigveda texts, jointly with Christopher Minkowski 2005-2018; supervision of graduate students specialising in Indo-Iranian Philology for the Faculty of Linguistics, Comparative Philology and Phonetics.
Publications deal with historical and comparative linguistic problems in Vedic Sanskrit, Avestan and Old Persian texts. Edition, translation and commentary on book 11 from the Paippalāda recension of the Atharvaveda in preparation..