Annual Lectures

Each year a scholar with a distinguished record of research in the field was invited to St Andrews to deliver the Centre’s Annual Lecture. Traditionally, a day-long workshop was organized in connection with this lecture, to further stimulate debate and collaboration. During their visit, the lecturer also met informally with St Andrews postgraduate students and ran a postgraduate seminar on a topic connected with their lecture.

Annual Lectures for the Centre of the Literatures of the Roman Empire:

2016/17 – ‘Horace’s Hymn to Bacchus (Odes 2.19): poetics and politics’, Stephen Harrison (Oxford)
2017/18 – ‘Roman Apocalypses and the future of Empire’, Alessandro Schiesaro (Manchester)
(postponed due to snow)
2018/19 – ‘Roman Apocalypses and the future of Empire’, Alessandro Schiesaro (Manchester)
2019/20 – ‘Apuleius the Provincial’, Alessandro Barchiesi, Professor of Latin at New York
2020/21 – ‘Sexual Ethics and Stupid Philosophers: the many lives of Secundus the Silent Philosopher’, Prof. Helen Morales (University of California, Santa Barbara)
2021/22 – ‘Horace’s Cato’, Prof. Michèle Lowrie (Chicago)
2022/23 – ‘The Freedom to Ruin Ourselves, if We Want To‘, Prof. Rebecca Langlands (Exeter)
2023/24 – ‘Strange stew: the emperor Vitellius and his “Shield of Minerva”‘, Rhiannon Ash (Oxford)