Christopher Fleming represents UWTSD at the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History hosted by Birkbeck College and University College London March 2018

This blog post is by our very own Christopher Fleming, a PhD student with the Faculty of Humanities at UWTSD, who earlier this month attended the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History.

On 17^th March 2018, I was delighted to represent UWTSD at the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History (AMPAH) as a PhD student with the Faculty of Humanities at UWTSD. This conference, which was generously hosted by Birkbeck College and UCL, was a wonderful chance for postgraduate students to come together to share their research and build a transnational postgraduate community, with speakers from Tel-Aviv University and the University of Nebraska.

After a short walk in the snow to Birkbeck College, the day opened with a plenary session given by Professor Robin Osbourne on the role of a historian (partly based upon his recent article in Past and Present[1]). As one of the foremost historians of our times, there are few people better placed to assess the current state of studies in ancient history. A fascinating and mysterious performance based on true historical events can be checked out at https://www.inhismind.net/. He emphasised that while it seems easy for us to draw attention biases and inaccuracies in ancient historical narratives, we should, as historians, apply a similar framework to our own research. For example, we might ask: what are our preconceptions of a topic? Why do we prefer one account over another? How objective can we be? These are key questions in any study of ancient history cbd farms, and this was made evident by speakers throughout the day.

Following this, there were a total of 36 postgraduate speakers split into four panels across three sessions. This gave a huge number of postgraduates at various stages a chance to present on their research. All the papers I attended were of an extremely high standard, but my personal highlights included:

• Chiara Strazulla (Cardiff University), ‘All the Etruscan Ladies: Livia and the Perception of Etruscan Women in Augustan Rome’ (pictured)
• Cristina Gonzàlez Mestre (UCL), ‘Macedonian Military Settlers in Hellenistic Asia Minor through Epigraphy’
• Joanna Kemp (University of Warwick), ‘Tracing Roman amicitia in Bosporan Royal Titulature’

The event also served as a great opportunity for networking and

catching up with other postgraduates and academic staff, food and drink provided throughout the day (pictured). Overall, it was a wonderful experience and I look forward to the next one. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers and the panel chairs whose efforts made the day possible.

[1] Osbourne, R. 2017, ‘Classical Presentism’. Past and Present, Vol. 234, Is. 1, 1^st Feb 2017, pp. 217-226.