Classics
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Emma Stafford
Senior Lecturer in Classics
+44 (0)113 34 33539
MA (Cambridge)
PhD (London)
Research Interests
Emma's research interests lie in various aspects of Greek cultural history, especially religion, approached via a combination of literary and material evidence.
She has about 20 articles in print or nearing completion on a variety of topics in Greek myth, religion and iconography. She is author of Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece (Swansea 2000) and co-editor (with Judith Herrin) of Personification in the Greek World (Aldershot 2005). She has recently completed a book entitled Herakles for Routledge's Gods and Heroes in the Ancient World series (London 2012). Her commitment to communicating an interest in Classics beyond academia is demonstrated in the lavishly-illustrated Life, Myth and Art in Ancient Greece (London 2004). Work currently in progress includes a book-length study of the concept and the cult of Nemesis personified, and a short book about the Trojan War (Bristol Phoenix Press).
Biography
Emma studied for her BA in Classics at New Hall, Cambridge (1987-90), and moved to University College London to start her PhD in 1991.
While writing up the thesis she had part-time teaching jobs at Royal Holloway, Birkbeck and the University of Leicester (1994-5), but she started her first full-time job at the University of Wales, Lampeter in September 1995. While at Lampeter she completed her PhD (1999), as well as gaining useful experience in teaching and conference organisation. She moved to Leeds in January 2000, where she became Senior Lecturer in 2005.
In addition to her responsibilities at Leeds, she is currently Honorary Secretary of the Classical Association.
Books
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(2012) Herakles, in the series Gods and Heroes in the Ancient World (London: Routledge)
- (2005) (co-edited with J. Herrin) Personification in the Greek World, Centre for Hellenic Studies/Ashgate
- (2004) Life, Myth and Art in Ancient Greece (London : Duncan Baird)
- (2000) Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece (Swansea/London: Classical Press of Wales/Duckworth)
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(ed. with J.E. Herrin) Personification in the Greek World: from Antiquity to Byzantium (Centre for Hellenic Studies series no. 7) ( Aldershot : Ashgate)
Articles and parts of books
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(2012)'From the gymnasium to the wedding: Erôs in Athenian art and cult', in E. Sanders and C. Thumiger (eds) Erôs in Ancient Greece, Oxford University Press
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(2011) 'Clutching the chickpea: private pleasures of the bad boyfriend', in S.D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man. Essays in Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, Classical Press of Wales
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(2010) 'Herakles: between gods and heroes', in J.N. Bremmer and A. Erskine (eds 2010) The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations (Edinburgh Leventis Studies 5), Edinburgh, 228-44
- (2009) 'Visualising creation in ancient Greece', in D. Merolla (ed.) Creation Myths and the Visual Arts: an ongoing dialogue between word and image (Religion and the Arts vol. 13) (Leiden: Brill), 419-47
- (2008) 'Cocks to Asklepios: Sacrificial Practice and Healing Cult', in P. Brulé, V. Mehl (éd.), Le sacrifice, nouvelles perspectives, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 205-21
- (2007) Review article 'Greek religion', Journal of Hellenic Studies 127, 150-3
- (2007) 'Tibullus' Nemesis: divine Retribution and the poet', in Booth, J. and Maltby, R. (eds) What's in a Name? (Swansea: Classical Press
of Wales), 33-48 - (2007) "Personification in Greek religious thought and practice", in Ogden, D. (ed.) Blackwell Companion to Greek Religion (Oxford: Blackwell), 71-85
- (2005) "Nemesis, Hybris and violence", in Bertrand, J.-M. (ed.) La violence dans les mondes grec et romain, Paris, 195-212
- (2005) "Héraklès: encore et toujours le problème du heros theos", Kernos 18, 391-406
- (2005) "Vice or Virtue?: Herakles and the art of allegory", in Rawlings, L. (ed.), Herakles and Hercules: exploring a Greco-Roman divinity, Swansea, 71-96
- (2005) "Viewing and obscuring the female breast: glimpses of the ancient bra", in L. Cleland, L. Llewellyn Jones and M. Harlow (eds), The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, Oxford, 96-110
- (2005) "'Without you no-one is happy': the cult of Health in ancient Greece", in King, H. (ed.), Health in Antiquity, London, 120-35
- (2005) "Greece", in Woolf, G. (ed.), Ancient Civilizations: the illustrated guide to belief, mythology and art, London
- (2003) "Brother, son, friend and healer: Sleep the god", in Dowden, K. and Wiedemann, T. (eds), Sleep, Bari, 71-106
- (1999) "Plutarch on Persuasion", in Pomeroy, S.B. (ed.), Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and Consolation to His Wife: translation, commentary and interpretive essays, Oxford, 162-72
- (1998) "Masculine values, feminine forms: on the gender of personified abstractions" in Foxhall, L. and Salmon, J. (eds) Thinking Men: Masculinity and its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition, London, 43-56
- (1997) "A Wedding Scene?: notes on Akropolis 6471", Journal of Hellenic Studies 117, 200-202
- (1997) "Themis: religion and order in the archaic polis" in Rhodes, P.J. and Mitchell, L. (eds.), The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, London, 158-67
- (1991-3) "Aspects of Sleep in Hellenistic Sculpture", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 105-120