Andy Fox

Not intentionally subversive, but hortus? Not built, but clearly community focused, and lots of people have them where they don't mention their house.

Fab penultimate day so far at the Celtic Conference in Classics, we've been treated to some fantastic environmental papers, and I've really enjoyed learning about things I have never even considered!

I’ve got a Tantalus joke, but you’ll never get it

Really enjoyable day at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Sustainable Research at @liverpooluni.bsky.social. Always excellent to have those collaborative narratives on climate change and the environment!

Oh, and a shout out to 92degrees coffee in Liverpool and their subscription for keeping me from staying inside this last month or two!

Interdisciplinary seed funding sandpit today, looking forward to chatting with experts from The Other Side of Campus.

I really ought to start saying no to things professionally. Just a thought. Will probably delete later when I decide it’s a silly notion.

Hi folks, conscious that the Roman Trees Database has been taken down: I’m working on a way to get it back online and in a place where I can update it. In the meantime, if you need an entry from it, let me know!

Fun fact of the day: Pliny tells us that plane trees are watered with wine, and that wine actually promotes root growth (Natural History 12.8). This is (surprisingly?) accurate: spoiled wine produces nitrogen, which is an active ingredient in modern fertilisers! #ancienthistory #classics

Kudos to @maticiceronian.bsky.social & co-editor Jordan Rogers and all the contributors to this brand new volume.

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

New bio, who dis?

The people who owned this house before us had a policy: if it can’t be fixed with glue, you’ve not used enough. Which is how I just found out that a kitchen cupboard door was not held on by those helpful screw thingys.

I would like to register my displeasure at them for not returning the books to the cart like a good person. It’s a small thing, but lovely books deserve to be read.

Fully funded PhD opportunity - Univ. of Warwick - History of Travel Writing (sponsored by the co-founder of Lonely Planet!) warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/his... #skystorians #envhist

Are we still using ClassicsBlueSky AncientBlueSky and the 🏺and 🏛️ emoticons to find folk? And no, I will not let msn emoticons terminology die.

Today’s jobs: teach a Thucydides seminar, give a research skills lecture, then intro Greek test. My lot are all so nervous, bless them, but I have so much confidence in the lot of them

Thank you, I hope the book lives up to that review! @idaostenberg.bsky.social wrote about the triumph trees before me though, I can’t take credit for finding that!

Darn. First thread and a typo. Turn. I meant turn.

All in all, I’m grateful for my students, for my tutees, and for a new department that has been welcoming and supportive at every term (although if someone could explain the stain in the middle of the floor in my office beyond “that was cider”…)

They ask difficult questions, spot gaps in the book, and are an absolute bright spot in my day.

Another bright spot are the natural world crew, with their cracking ideas, wild tangents, and willingness to grapple with difficult topics. They make Friday 4-6pm a fun slot to teach.

In other related news, the Greek students I have are phenomenal. I don’t think any of them are on here, so the fact they get awkward when I tell them well done is immaterial. These are students who started with nothing, and are now translating passages.

Found out this week that:
1. my Ancient🏺Greek students judge whether or not a class is going to be unhinged by the state of my hair;
2. they are surprised I have a plan for each class, and even more surprised we complete it most classes, and
3. my hair is very rarely not in some degree of a state.

Likewise, my module on Friday stretched from Anglesey to Sri Lanka, because the world doesn’t stop at a border

But that won’t stop me from poking fun at the *shudder* Hellenists.

No no, that’s not right. What is a Pericles by the way?

In a shocking turn of events, I am teaching Greek history today and tomorrow. I thought the whole point of specialism was that you could focus on teaching the better civilisation?

Happy to report that, for the next eighteen months, I will be Lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading! Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way, you have all been fabulous and I wouldn’t have done this without you

aerial view of an earthwork considting of two banks ans ditches. the monument is divided in half by a field boundary. on one side it is well preserved, on the other ploughing has destroyed the structure which is visible only as a faint trace

I'm reading the Historic Environment Scotland scheduled monument document. Contains this stunning image of Habchester Fort showing the impact of different landuse histories and how fragile our prehistory is.

The one that lives in my head is the student who had written a page and a half on the metaphor of a ship being a morsel for the sea in a great buffet and how it flipped the expected narrative of the sea as a buffet, while the passage actually read that the ship was buffeted by the waves.

A stack of books in the Institute of Classical Studies library. To avoid precarity, the books are in fact in three stacks.

Tell me you’ve been chasing down references today without telling me you’ve been chasing down references today.

Sportula FAQ Sportula FAQ (updated as of August 31, 2023) Q: Is the Sportula still running? YES! As long as there are Classicists in need, we will be here trying to help (we hope). We are all students/junior sch...

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