Teaching

Teaching texts, objects and places

Teaching is my favourite part of the job. My approach is motivated by a commitment to nurturing independent, self-motivated and critically thinking students who can apply the skills they build in tutorials and lectures to new material, regardless of the content involved.

How I teach

One must, of course, 'memorise the facts' in any class or tutorial, but a transformative learning experience in Classics and ancient history usually involves applying previous findings to new material. That is closer to 'deep learning', which is concerned with making connections and finding meaning rather than with isolated elements and rote memorisation. The skill of synthesising large quantities of information, reviewing a body of literature and finding a narrative within it is crucial to long-term success after graduation, so my tutorial teaching aims to train it through the weekly essays, while fostering students' own research interests. In practice this means I take a student-led approach, but press students to support their arguments in both written and verbal form.

It also requires clear learning goals. I set three to five for each session, based on what students ask for, and my essay feedback focuses on three things: content, structure, and argumentation and logic. I then use the essays to decide what we focus on in the tutorial. One-to-one meetings make this tailored: we discuss a student's interests and the areas they want to improve, and outline a development plan at the outset. One student wanted to get better at picture questions, so each week we looked at an object together for about ten minutes, wrote down what we observed, and then discussed how to relate a black-figure kylix with a symposium scene to the cultural phenomenon of the symposium, to the development of the individual city-state, and to the historical sources that describe such occasions. Where I can, I take students to objects, as I have with Roman sculpture in the Ashmolean. I also ask students to build knowledge graphs, mental maps that link topics in several ways and give them intellectual structures to come back to before exams.

I ask every student for one piece of feedback at the end of each course. When one told me my handouts were too extensive for the time available, I began opening each unit with a short annotated reading list and offering more to those who want it; when another asked for more practice connecting images and texts, I added sessions that compare them by style as well as content. My job as a tutor is to create a positive and intellectually stimulating environment, and to build students' confidence in speaking, argument, writing and engaging with a wide variety of ideas.

What students and colleagues say

"She also took me to the Ashmolean for a session on Roman statues, which was really enjoyable and shows how much time she is prepared to dedicate to her students." Student, 'Texts and Contexts', Trinity College, Oxford

"I could not have asked for a better introduction to Late Antiquity!" Student, 'Art of the Later Roman Empire' tutorials, Oxford

"Encouraging, affirming, good-humoured, professional, never shaming, and promotes an attitude of intellectual curiosity." Co-teacher, 'Texts and Contexts'

A proposed course: The History of Classical Archaeology

An undergraduate seminar, open to students without Latin, Greek or prior archaeology, that approaches classical archaeology through the people who dug it up. Each week takes one excavator and asks the same questions: what did this person expect to find, and why; who paid for the work, and who carried it out; what was recorded, and what was thrown away; and how did the first interpretation come to be built into the site, the museum and the textbook? Students read the excavators in their own words alongside the plans, photographs and displays their work produced, with sessions in museum and special collections. Assignments include source commentaries, an excavator's dossier and the rewriting of a museum label.

• Antonio Bosio and the catacombs of Rome · Karl Weber at Herculaneum and Pompeii · Carlo Fea and the Roman Forum · Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Christian archaeology · Giuseppe Fiorelli at Pompeii · Heinrich Schliemann at Troy and Mycenae · Giacomo Boni in the Roman Forum · Arthur Evans at Knossos · Clark Hopkins at Dura-Europos · Manolis Andronikos at Vergina

University of Oxford: lecturing and classes

• Lecturer, 'Art of the Later Roman Empire', Faculty of Classics
• Co-instructor, 'Texts and Contexts', Trinity College: team-taught this interdisciplinary Classics paper on set literary texts in translation alongside images and objects, with a literary scholar and an ancient historian, contributing the archaeological perspective; prepared maps and image resources; marked picture commentaries, essays and mock examinations; led a revision session among the Roman sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum
• Lecturer, 'Digital Skills in AI', Digital Capabilities Centre, IT Services
• Teaching Assistant, 'Roman Core: 50 BC–AD 50', Faculty of Classics

University of Oxford: undergraduate tutorials

• Merton College: 'Roman Core: 50 BC–AD 50'; 'Roman Architecture'; 'Greek Art, 500–300 BC'; 'Cities and Settlements in the Roman Empire'
• Faculty of Classics: 'Art of the Later Roman Empire'
• St Benet's Hall: 'Art Under the Roman Empire', across all three terms

Tutorials were built around weekly essays, which students defended in discussion, and included object-based sessions in the Ashmolean Museum.

Indiana University Bloomington

• Instructor of record: 'The City of Rome'; 'Roman Housing'; 'Augmented Reality Exhibit Design'. Designed the syllabi, supervised end-of-term research projects, and adapted the courses to a hybrid format during COVID-19.
• Lab and discussion instructor: 'Introduction to 3D Modelling'; 'Design & Development in Unity 3D'; 'Introduction to Virtual Heritage'; 'Introduction to Social Informatics'
• Associate Instructor, I494 capstone design projects: advised student teams through a two-semester design and development project, with weekly meetings and written feedback on each assignment

Mentoring, admissions and training

• Admissions interviewer, Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Oxford
• Undergraduate Research Adviser, Virtual World Heritage Lab, Indiana University
• Graduate Mentor, Merton College
• Junior Dean, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
• Advanced Teaching and Learning Programme, Oxford Centre for Teaching and Learning; Peer Support Training Programme, Oxford Centre for Welfare and Student Support

Seminars and workshops convened

• ArchAI Workshop, Cambridge Digital Humanities, and AI, Archives, and Museums, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (planned)
• AI and Archives in Early Christian Archaeology, Rome
• 'Classics & AI', Ancient History Faculty Seminar, Oxford
• Oxford Byzantine Graduate Research Seminar; Roman Discussion Forum, Oxford; Digital Classics Seminar, Institute of Classical Studies, London
• Panels on 'Methods in Digital Archaeology' and 'Methods in Digital Art History', Archaeological Institute of America

Museums

Much of my teaching happens in collections, from the Ashmolean to the galleries of the Eskenazi Museum of Art. My museum work is described on the research page.