Bristol IGRCT

A photograph of a lecture hall full of people watching the lecturer be introduced.

Professor George Corbett delivering his lecture.

Last Thursday, the IGRCT was delighted to welcome Professor George Corbett from the University of St Andrews to deliver a talk on Dante and Thomistic theology for the annual Aquinas lecture. We are very grateful to Professor Corbett for coming all this way to share his expertise!

Happening this evening!

📢 THIS THURSDAY 📢

Don't forget to sign up for this year's Aquinas lecture! Professor George Corbett will be speaking on the relationship between Dante's poetry and Thomas Aquinas' theology.

🎟️ buytickets.at/theinstitute...
⏰January 29th, 6PM-7PM
📍Arts Complex Lecture Theatre 3

The lecture will be delivered by Professor George Corbett from the University of St Andrews, and will be followed by a free drinks reception.

A poster for the event advertised, featuring a drawing of the poet Dante in a pale cream colour.

📣 EVENT REMINDER 📣

Don't forget to sign up for the annual Aquinas lecture, titled "Whose Aquinas? The Thomism of Dante and of Étienne Gilson."

🎟️ buytickets.at/theinstitute...
⏰January 29th, 6PM-7PM
📍Arts Complex Lecture Theatre Three, University of Bristol

Photograph of keynote speaker Dr Peter Dent

We are proud to announce the third of our wonderful keynote speakers: late medieval and Renaissance sculpture expert, Dante scholar and Head of Subject for History of Art... our very own Dr Peter Dent! 🎉🎉🎉
#medievalsky #skystorian

@uobartsmatter.bsky.social @bristolcms.bsky.social

and of striking a mortal blow to Thomism. Defending Dante against Gilson’s accusations (and accusing Gilson, instead, of crimes against Thomism), this lecture argues for for a new Leonine renaissance of both Thomistic and Dante studies."

The event is free, open to all, and will be followed by a drinks reception. Lecture abstract:

"The papal encyclical Praeclara Summorum (1921) celebrates Dante as the ‘disciple of St Thomas Aquinas’. By contrast, Étienne Gilson accused Dante in 1934 of two crimes against Aquinas >

A poster for the event, featuring a Renaissance painting of the poet Dante holding open a book.

📢 EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT 📢

The 2026 Aquinas lecture will be presented by Professor George Corbett from the University of St Andrews, titled "Whose Aquinas? The Thomism of Dante and of Étienne Gilson"

🎟️ www.tickettailor.com/events/thein...
⏰29/01, 6PM-7PM
📍Arts Complex, Lecture Theatre Three

Image credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

An ancient Greek vase painting showing a man stabbing another man who has two faces and three arms. Behind them a woman stands next to a cow.

Happy New Year from the IGRCT! Our first #imageoftheweek for 2026 is this 6th century Attic vase painting depicting Hermes slaying the giant Argos. Argos has two faces, similar to the Roman god Janus! Hera and Io stand behind them. #classicssky #classicsbluesky #ancientbluesky

Thankyou very much to everyone who attended our events and to everyone who made them happen - we wish you all a restful holiday season and a happy new year!

#classicssky #ancientbluesky #classicsbluesky

We also successfully launched a new annual event, the director's reception series, with a series of online lectures entitled "Oblique Classicisms / Hidden Histories." We have heard from three incredible speakers already, and are looking forward for the continuation of the series this coming March.

In November, we were delighted to welcome documentary maker and historical consultant Jonathan Stamp for our annual donors' celebration. Jonathan delivered a fascinating talk on Ancient Roman life and his experience working on HBO's "ROME".

At the end of October we also facilitated the launch of a new South West and Wales network for the Hellenic Society - we look forward to seeing what other collaborations and events come of this!

and only four days later we hosted a book launch for Connie Bloomfield-Gadelha and Edith Hall's volume "Time, Tense, and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature."

The poster for Jonathan Stamp's talk, featuring a blue monochrome image of the Roman forum set for HBO's ROME series.

The poster for the book launch, featuring a painting of a woman with no face standing on a battlement.

The poster for the oblique classicisms/hidden histories series, featuring a monochrome painting of a woman walking down a staircase.

The poster for the Symonds lecture, featuring a collage of black and white photographs of John Addington Symonds.

As the term draws to a close we're looking back on an extremely busy Autumn at the IGRCT. We began the academic year with a very well-attended Symonds lecture delivered by Alexander Taylor and Nicky Sugar from Bristol Special Collections, >

It explores how particular themes are instantiated across a range of imperial contexts, as well as offering carefully selected case studies for detailed analysis.

sophisticated analyses, though to date there has been a lack of significant scholarly engagement with geographical context. This volume explores the experiences of classical mirror and mask users across the Roman empire, from Gaul and Africa to Asia Minor and the Levant.

This book explores the ways in which masks and mirrors mediated encounters, enabled performances and effected visual and social metamorphoses across the Roman empire. The complex and multifaceted roles played by masks and mirrors in Roman culture has been the subject of several >

The cover of the book, featuring a bronze mask.

We are very excited to announce that Professor Shelley Hales, IGRCT board member has just published "Mirrors and Masks in the Roman Empire: Encounter, Performance, and Metamorphosis" with Bloomsbury.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mirrors-a...

The lecture was followed by an engaging Q&A, and discussions continued during the drinks reception.

We were fascinated to learn about how his experience studying classics and his perspective on the ancient Roman mindset influenced his consultation for the series - and how the TV producers responded to his expertise!

A photograph of a man presenting in a room in front of a powerpoint presentation.

Last month we welcomed Jonathan Stamp, prolific documentary maker and former historical consultant on the HBO series "ROME," to deliver a talk for our yearly Donors' Celebration event.

@uobartsmatter.bsky.social @clahbristol.bsky.social @bristolunienglish.bsky.social @uobrisceh.bsky.social

A picture of a woman sitting in a tree, reading from a book, whilst a crowd around her watches.

On Thursday December 4th, IGRCT director Laura Jansen will be giving a lecture at the Cambridge Faculty of Classics entitled "Cicada Sound Paths: Animal Voice and the Acoustic Ambient in Phoebe Giannisi's "Tettix"

The lecture will be held at 4:30PM in the Classics Faculty building.

Hear ye, hear ye! Very exciting news! 🎉Our PGRs have now released the call for papers for their annual CMS PGR conference (the longest-running PGR medieval conference in the UK!)

We'd be so grateful if you could share this with anyone who may be interested!

#medievalsky #skystorians

into the silhouettes of the characters, as a stiffness hindering movement as well as the very possibility of relationality. This stiffness, as I argue, can help us understand oblique classicism as an atmospheric overload, an unbearable sense of the unspeakable." #classicssky #ancientbluesky

I read the play alongside Laura (1944), the Otto Preminger film, which likewise stars Gene Tierney. I am interested in the formal feel of a dense uprightness, conceptualizable as horror itself, that seeps into human bodies, >