Conferences & Courses

On this page you'll find details of conferences, INSET, study days, refresher courses and Summer Schools for teachers. Go here for Students' Summer Schools.

LACT Lecture

Greek Sculpture by Dr Karim Arafat

Wednesday 30 April 2008

Room NB336, Senate House

(followed by AGM at 7.30)

Open to students and teachers (membership available on the door)

Joan Pye Public Lecture: 'Understanding Britain as a Roman Imperial Possession'

House of Lords

24 June 2008

The 4th Joan Pye public lecture, 'Understanding Britain as a Roman  Imperial Possession', will be given by Professor David Mattingly 

(University of Leicester) on Tuesday 24th June 2008 at 6.00 in the House of Lords.

The lecture is sponsored by the Roman Research Trust  (http://rrt.classics.ox.ac.uk/). Admission is free but by ticket only as numbers are limited. For tickets please apply giving your name and contact details (preferably email) to Dr John Pearce, Department of Classics, King's College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, john.pearce@kcl.ac.uk. Tickets will be dispatched in late May with information on the venue and entry procedure for the House of Lords.

“Rome: In Situ & in the Lab,” A Technology Workshop & Study Tour

July 2008

The American Classical League and its Committee on Educational Computer Applications are planning a two-week technology workshop and study tour in Rome and Campania from July 20 to August 3, 2008.  Accommodations and a computer lab will be provided by the American University of Rome, and excursions will include many of the most significant sites in Rome and Campania.

The course will alternate days between those spent visiting museums and archaeological sites and those spent developing teaching materials in the computer lab.  Participants will learn what factors to consider in documenting sites with digital photography and journals, as well as the latest methods of presenting that material in formats most accessible to today’s students.

This workshop-tour is designed for 30-50 teachers of Latin, Classical Studies, and related fields.  Travel companions (adults only) are welcome to attend and participate in all activities except computer lab workshops, if desired, at a reduced rate.  Scholarship funds are available from the ACL and other organizations.

Accommodations will be in air-conditioned apartment suites with paired bedrooms (single or double occupancy), bath, kitchenette, and sitting area.  Meals will be provided by neighborhood restaurants and food shops.

Deadline for applications is 15 January 2008.

For more information, go to www.aclclassics.org/rome2008, email roblatousek@yahoo.com, or contact the American Classical League, 422 Wells Mill Dr., Oxford OH 45056 USA, tel. 513-529-7741.

EUROCLASSICA

ACADEMIA HOMERICA
ATHENS AND CHIOS
11-20 JULY 2008

EUROCLASSICA was formed in 1991 and organises courses and conferences on classical themes for students and teachers in schools and universities from all parts of Europe. The ACADEMIA HOMERICA began in 1998 and is now an annual event in the EUROCLASSICA calendar. In 2008 the ACADEMIA HOMERICA will take place 11-20 July, meeting first in Athens on 11 July and then transferring by overnight ferry to the island of Chios, and returning to Athens on 21 July.

The focus of the conference each year is Homer, and the programme contains around thirty lectures, ranging from the Mycenaean elements in Homer to modern interpretations of Homeric themes. For students there will be about eight hours devoted to a study (in English) of the Greek text of Odyssey book 6, and a separate programme of accompanying lectures. Most of this takes place in the Homereion Conference Centre in Chios town.

But there is much more. In Athens we visit the Acropolis and the National Museum. On Chios we visit the island’s famous mastic villages, its monasteries and its museums, and the archaeological site of Emporio in the south of the island.

In Athens hotel accommodation is provided for the night of 11 July, and on Chios we use the excellent en suite student rooms of the University of the Aegean in the northern suburbs of Chios town.

The cost of the conference for students and teachers is 500 Euros. This includes all accommodation, meals, visits to sites in Greece, and transport from Athens to Chios. The only additional costs are your fares from home to Athens. Students should ensure that they take a student union card or other identification, which will give free access to sites.

If you would like to attend the 2008 ACADEMIA HOMERICA please contact Dr Maria-Eleftheria Giatrakou, 146-8 Mavromichali, 11472 ATHENS (e-mail: gstc@otenet.gr). For further information contact Professor John Thorley, e-mail: jt275@etherway.net

Meeting the Challenge: bringing classical texts to life in the classroom

International conference, Venice, July 26-28 2008.

This conference, organised by Licia Landi (University of Venice), Bob Lister (University of Cambridge) and Per Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen), is a follow-up to the European conference on the teaching of Latin held in Cambridge in 2005 which was attended by more than 80 classicists from 15 countries. For the 2008 conference there will room for up to 100 delegates and the focus will be on engaging and innovative approaches to teach classical texts, in the original and in translation. All papers will be in English.

The venue for the conference is Venice International University. The campus is situated on the island of San Servolo, ten minutes from St. Mark’s Square by boat, and its facilities and accommodation are of a very high standard ( all rooms are air-conditioned). The cost of the conference, including accommodation and all meals, will be approximately £350.

For further details click here and/or visit the conference web site (www.iperlatino.it/venice).

CIRCE Project:  Classics Links in Europe

The activities of the CIRCE Project are very much ongoing, though our period of funding by the European Commission is now over. Our books have been widely distributed throughout the countries of the original partner organisations (Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, UK) and in many cases, stocks of the non-English language versions have been exhausted now. It is worth mentioning, however, that these books can all be freely downloaded as pdf files from the website by registered users.

The website itself is now accessible at www.circe.eu, as well as www.circe.be. It has suffered quite a few attacks recently by hackers, during which time it has been offline for a while. However, thanks entirely to the ongoing (unpaid) commitment to the project by Belgian partner, Het Gemeenschapsonderwijs, there has been a tremendous recent effort to rewrite the site and impose new security on it. We are optimistic that things will remain more stable from now onwards. It is very much worthwhile being a registered user of the site: user details will not be employed improperly and you will not receive thousands of emails as a consequence. As a registered user of the site, you are allowed access to an image bank of around 400 images and can also download copies of the CIRCE Manual in various languages.

CIRCE in Europe

As time goes by, the project is still being talked about in different EU countries. On March 23rd, I attended the AGM in Utrecht of the Vereniging Classici Nederland (www.oudheid.nl) where I gave a presentation of our work in Dutch. There are still high levels of interest in CIRCE around Europe and it is worth noting that we now have more than 800 registered users of our website and rising. We are discussing various ways by which we can keep interaction high, for example at the website end of things, and I hope to have more news to report in the future. For the first time, we have pre-inscriptions for our 2007 course from Eastern Europe, which is most exciting.

CIRCE courses and applications

Without doubt, the most active area of our work now is our teacher training, which remains financially supported by the EU Comenius programme. Each year we continue to run five day training courses in the use of ICT in Classics teaching. The first of these was held in Oxford in the summer of 2006. At present, we have an excellent level of pre-inscriptions for the event at Nyborg, Denmark, to take place July 30 to August 5 2007, so we are hoping for another successful event.

The process for application for a place on one of our courses is as follows.

• Pre-inscription must be made via Het Gemeenschapsonderwijs (details on www.circe.eu)
• Approval is given to individual applicants by Het Gemeenschapsonderwijs
• Applications are sent to the National Agency (for national agency details, see http://www.lifelonglearningprogramme.org.uk/) NB – such applications must be made before a given date of the year in which the training is offered. For 2008, the date should be February 28.
• Funding is allocated by the National Agency, which should cover all costs, including travel, accommodation and the course itself.
• Applicants are informed about the success of their application as and when the National Agency is ready to do so
  

By the time you read this, it will be too late to apply for Denmark. Let me urge members of JACT, however, to keep an eye on the CIRCE website in the near future, as we will shortly be posting up details of our next course, to be held in summer 2008, at the American University of Rome. We expect that this course will prove extremely popular, so please get your application in early!

Why would you come on our courses?

It’s an easy question to answer. First, it shouldn’t cost you or your school anything. Second, you will get a major award by a national body, which is well worth having on your cv. Third, you get state of the art teaching, which is aimed more at practical, hands-on skills than at specific courses or examinations: our participants come from all over the EU, so concerns about national examinations, course books or syllabuses lose relevance. Fourth, you get to meet and share experiences with classicists from all those different countries, so making friends and setting up new international collaborations becomes a real possibility.

Please email me for any further advice or help, at julian@j-progs.com

Julian Morgan

Regional News & Events

Local CA branches and local ACTs who would like details of events listed here should contact JACT. Alternatively consult the CA Branches page on the CA website at http://www.classicalassociation.org.

Minimus

For all information about the activities of the Project please contact me at home (email preferred). Information can also be obtained from our website:- http://www.minimus-etc.co.uk.

82 Swiss Drive, Bristol, BS3 2RW Tel/fax: 0117 953 1819 email: bmbellmini@aol.com
Barbara Bell

The Iris Project

The Iris Project is launching a new initiative this summer for adults / families in East London and East Oxford. Latin lessons will be offered over the summer months as lunch time sessions which will take place in local parks. People will be able to bring their lunch (and a blanket!), and learn some Latin and also ancient culture. The classes will be a pound per session, so that they are affordable for all. This will cover the costs of materials for the sessions.

They will start in the first week of May. The dates, venues and times will be announced on the website once we've got an idea of the levels of interest.

Latin is often viewed as an elite area of study only accessible to the very educated, and this can be daunting or off-putting for people, so the intention is to encourage people from all walks of life and backgrounds in communities to have a go at picking up a bit of Latin over lunch in a relaxed setting...

If you would be interested in attending these sessions, please get in touch at www.irismagazine.org