This year saw the important publication of Professor John Ma’s ‘Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State’. It is the most recent attempt at a synoptic history of the polis throughout the ancient world, and will surely influence scholarship in many ways for years to come. We are therefore pleased to invite graduate students working on the polis, however broadly conceived, to submit abstracts for the conference ‘New Voices on the Polis’. The goal for this conference is to bring together graduate students from across different fields, including Ancient History, Linguistics, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Archaeology, to present and discuss their research. We particularly aim to encourage discussion and cross-pollination between these different academic fields, which all have plenty to contribute to the study of the polis.
We invite Master’s and Doctoral students to submit abstracts for 20-minute papers in English relating to the polis, with a temporal scope from the Early Iron Age to Late Antiquity. Suggested topics may include but are not limited to:
-Citizenship, non-citizens and political marginalisation
-Political institutions and polis ‘stateness’
-Religion and worship in the polis
-Negotiation between elite and non-elite
-Archaeological approaches to the polis
-Relationships between poleis and with supralocal powers
-Ethnic and cultural identities, and the question of ‘Hellenisation’
-The language(s) of the polis
The conference will take place in-person in Oxford, at an accessible venue, on the 17-18th May 2025. The working language of the conference will be English. We intend to have fair gender representation in the speakers. Accommodation for speakers will be provided for two nights. Although speakers will be drawn from the international graduate community, attendance will be open to researchers and academics at any stage of their career — a sign-up link for attendees will be circulated in the coming months.
We can happily confirm that Professor John Ma (Columbia University) will be giving a keynote.
Please submit abstracts of 300 words and a short biography, including name and current institutional affiliation, to [email protected], by 6th January 2025. Any queries should be directed to the same address. Information, including the schedule and registration form, will be updated on our website, https://newvoicesonthepolis.
