Edith Hall | |
|---|---|
 Hall in 2023 | |
| Born | (1959-03-04)4 March 1959 (age 66) |
| Academic background | |
| Education |
|
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Classicist |
| Main interests | Bringing classics into state schools |
Edith HallFBA (born 4 March 1959) is a British scholar ofclassics, specialising inancient Greek literature andcultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History atDurham University.[1][2] She has spoken on the radio and appeared on television as an expert in Ancient Greek society, literature and theatre.[3] Her bookFacing down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me (2024,Yale University Press) has been shortlisted for the 2024London Hellenic Prize.[4] As of 2025[update], her most recent book isClassical Civilisation and Ancient History in British Secondary Education, written withArlene Holmes-Henderson (2025,Liverpool University Press).[5][6][better source needed]
Edith Hall was born inBirmingham and attended school inNottingham.[2] She won a major open scholarship toWadham College, Oxford, where she studied for a BA degree in classics and modern languages.[1] She gained first class honours in 1982, and went on to aDPhil degree atSt Hugh's College, Oxford, which she completed in 1988.[1] Her doctoral thesis was awarded the Hellenic Foundation Prize.[7]
Hall taught at theUniversity of Reading between 1990 and 1995.[7] She went on to a post at the University of Oxford, where she was a fellow ofSomerville College.[7] In 2001, she became Leverhulme Chair of Greek Cultural History atDurham University, and remained in that post until 2006.[7] She then took up a research professorship atRoyal Holloway,University of London, in classics, English and drama.[7] She has hadvisiting scholar roles at institutions includingNorthwestern University, theUniversity of Leiden andGresham College.[7] In 2012 she became a professor in theDepartment of Classics.[7] Since 2022 she has been a professor at Durham University.[7]
During her time at Royal Holloway, she set up and directed the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome.[citation needed] She resigned over a dispute about funding for classics after leading a campaign to prevent cuts to, or the closure of, the Royal Holloway classics department.[8] She was quoted as saying "You cannot have a serious university without the study of the Greeks and Romans, asTerry Eagleton has said. It is a tragedy because we were really building something here".[8]
When a lecturer at Oxford in 1996 Hall co-founded, withOliver Taplin, the interdisciplinaryArchive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. The project collects and analyses materials related to the staging and influence of classical plays. The project's ten co-edited volumes, of which Hall is lead editor of seven and contributor to nine, have been described as playing "a pivotal role in establishing the parameters and methodologies of the study of the reception of Classical drama in performance".[9]Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914, by Hall andFiona Macintosh, came out of the project. It was shortlisted for the Theatre Society Book of the Year Prize, the J.D. Criticos prize and theRunciman Award.[citation needed]
In 2012 Hall was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize to study ancient Greek theatre in theBlack Sea.[10]
In 2014 she was elected to theAcademy of Europe.[11] She was elected aFellow of the British Academy in 2022.[12]
Hall researches ancient Greek literature, especiallyHomer,tragedy,comedy,satyr drama, ancient literary criticism and rhetoric,Herodotus andXenophon, although her publications discuss many other ancient authors includingLucian,Plutarch, Artemidorus,Menander,Thucydides,Plato andAristotle, and other ancient evidence includingmetre and versification, papyri, painted pottery and inscriptions. She is an expert onclassical reception – the ways in which ancient culture and history have informed later epochs, whether in later antiquity or modernity, and whether in fiction, drama, cinema, poetry, political theory, or philosophy. Her research has been influential in three areas: the understanding of the performance of literature in the ancient theatre and its role in society, the representation of ethnicity; the uses of Classical culture in European education, identity, and political theory.[citation needed]
Several of her books argue that theatre plays an important role in intellectual and cultural history, especially because entertainments reach lower-status audiences. These includeGreek and Roman Actors (2002, withP. E. Easterling), andThe Theatrical Cast of Athens (2006), which incorporates a revisiting ofInventing the Barbarian in the light of developments in international history since 1989.[clarification needed]New Directions in Ancient Pantomime (2008), the first study of the performance of mythological narratives which educated mass audiences across the ancientMediterranean world for several centuries, was praised by D. Feeney, professor of Latin atPrinceton University, as "indispensable for all students of the Roman Empire".[13] Her book,Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun, argues that Greek tragedy is a philosophical medium, includes an essay on every surviving ancient Greek tragedy and has been described as "admirably exhaustive".[14] Her 2013 bookAdventures withIphigenia in Tauris: A Cultural History ofEuripides' Black Sea Tragedy is a history of the impact of a tragedy by Euripides, covering its presence in vase-painting, Aristotle, Latin poetry,Pompeian murals, Roman imperialsarcophagi and literature including theancient novel and Lucianic dialogue.
From 1996 to 2003, Hall contributed to theOxford World's Classics Euripides series, which included all nineteen ofEuripides' extant plays, newly translated byJames Morwood andRobin Waterfield. Hall provided the introductions to each of the five volumes, drawing out the modern parallels with the texts. In the introduction toBacchae and Other Plays, she explored Euripides' supposed "radicalism", quoting the criticF. L. Lucas: "notIbsen, notVoltaire, notTolstoi ever forged a keener weapon in defence of womanhood, in defiance of superstition, in denunciation of war, than theMedea, theIon, theTrojan Women".[15]
Hall's first monograph,Inventing the Barbarian (1989), argued that ancient European identity relied on the stereotyping as 'other' of an Asiatic enemy. Her argument that ancient ideas about ethnicity underlie modern questions of nationalism, racism and ethnic self-determination has been influential in classics, and regarded as "seminal" by scholars in other fields.[16][17][18] This work was developed in her scholarly commentary on the Greek text ofAeschylus'Persians, with English translation (1996), and in the essay collection she editedCultural Responses to thePersian Wars (2007).
Hall's research has incorporated later cultural history, especially the social role played by the presence of ancient Greece and Rome. Her books in this area includeThe Return of Ulysses: a Cultural History of Homer'sOdyssey (2008), noted byThe New York Times for its scholarship and accessibility.[19] This was followed by two collections of essays on ancient slavery and one on the uses and abuses of Greek and Roman texts and ideas in the relationship between India and Britain 1757–2007.
Hall is the principal investigator forThe People's History of Classics, a project which presents and amplifies the voices of Britishworking-class women and men who engaged with ancient Greek and Roman culture between 1789 and 1917. This developed from a research project based at King's College, London, calledClassics and Class in Britain 1789-1917.[20] Hall delivered the J P Barron Memorial Lecture at theInstitute of Classical Studies in 2017 onClassicist Foremothers and Why They Matter.[21] She advocates the teaching of classics, including classical civilisation as well as languages, inBritish state schools.[3]
Known for her humorous style of lecturing, Hall has made television and radio appearances, as well as acting as consultant for professional theatre productions by theNational Theatre,Shakespeare's Globe, theRoyal Shakespeare Company,Live Theatre inNewcastle, andTheatercombinat in Germany.[22][23][24][better source needed] In February 2014 she appeared on BBC2Newsnight and recited a newly-discovered poem ofSappho in ancient Greek.[25][better source needed]
Hall has been married and divorced, and has two daughters.[3][26] She has had family members die by suicide, and has written about this inFacing down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me (2024).[3]Rowan Williams, writing in theNew Statesman, called it a "remarkable, brave and compassionate book".[27]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2025 (link)