Two Friends Talk History An ArchaeoArtist Production

In this episode, I interview Dr Carlos Machado from the University of St Andrews about the social perceptions and realities of poverty in the Late Antique period. Dr Machado is a Roman historian whose work focuses on aspects of urban space in the Late Antique Roman world, from elite building, honorific monuments, and domestic spaces; he is now working on shedding a light on the strata of society that seldom received attention in the historical record or monumental commemorations - the p...

In this episode, I conduct an in-person interview with the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens, Dr Giorgos Mouraditis. Giorgos' research focuses on athletic self-representation in inscriptions from the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Listeners will be familiar with the British School of Athens from the last episode when I met with its Director, Professor Rebecca Sweetman, to discuss the exciting public engagement work that the institute is working on. I returned t...

In this week's episode, flips the script and am interviewed by returning guest, Dr Briana King. This episode will be part one of an ongoing look at how the ancient world is used in different media today!I discuss with Dr King the history of “Classics” and what we mean when we discuss classical reception. Our first conversation is meant to lay down the foundational context for understanding what it means when classical images and stories are incorporated into modern media through books, ...

In this week's episode, Zofia interviews the Director of the British School at Athens (BSA), Professor Rebecca Sweetman. Rebecca has stepped into the role of Director of the BSA for the next few years and has really hit the ground running. We discuss the role and responsibilities of the institute and the exciting outreach she is leading with her fantastic teams in Athens and Knossos. With the 50th anniversary of the Fitch Laboratory coming up next year, we discuss how researchers, academics, ...

In this episode of Two Friends Talk History, Zofia interviews Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of St Andrews, and founder of the Visualising War and Peace Project, Dr Alice König. In this interview, Zofia asks Alice about ideas of representing war in antiquity, and if concepts like a ‘peace movement’ was possible in a period of Roman Imperium. We discuss the absences in war narratives, and war’s impacts on women and children, and then turn our attention to the podcast series that...

In this week's episode of Two Friends Talk History, Zofia is joined by Dr Sam Ellis, an expert in the language of tyranny in antiquity and the study of monocratic power in the Greek polis from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. We explore how the language used to frame the actions of sole rulers has created a construct of 'tyrant' that remains with us today. For a suggested reading list and more information, please check out my website for a blog post on this episode and more ...