Our Durham Department of Classics & Ancient History is a large and successful department. We consistently rank as one of the top Classics and Ancient History Departments in the UK for research and teaching, and came 13th in the 2022 QS World University Rankings.
Our degrees offer both academic rigour and an outstanding student experience. We are regularly among the top Classics departments in the UK for graduate employability. In 2019 we were awarded an Advance HE Athena Swan Bronze Award. This marks our ongoing commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusiveness. We are proud that our Department is highly international, forward-looking, and in many ways genuinely diverse in its makeup and outlook.
We offer students a very wide range of modules, which are grouped into three Single Honours and two Joint Honours programmes. These programmes are designed to emphasise the unity as well as the exciting variety of Greek and Roman antiquity.
As a centre of world-class research, we have a strong commitment to postgraduate provision, and welcome applications to the Taught MA programme, or applications for MA by research and PhD work in any of the (many) research specialities represented in the Department.
Our Department recorded an outstanding 96.1% overall student satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2020.
Our academic staff specialise in a broad range of artistic, historical, literary, linguistic, cultural, and philosophical aspects of the Graeco-Roman world. We have further expertise in the wider Ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
George Alexander Gazis is Assistant Professor in Greek Literature in the Department of Classics and Ancient History. He is interested in the function of mortality and the afterlife in the Homeric Epics and early Lyric. On Halloween we explore how these ancient understandings resonate with the festivities which now take place on 31st October.
Peter Rhodes (1940-2021) was internationally renowned as an eminent historian of ancient Greece. Here in Durham, he taught for 40 years and was a devoted friend of the Department even after his retirement. He is much missed in Durham and all around the world.
Explore our Durham University Classics Society blog, packed full of interesting classical and classically-inspired articles.
Durham University
To find out more about our department and courses, contact us using the information below.
38 North Bailey Durham DH1 3EU
+44 (0)191 3343170
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