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Faculty of Classics

 

Biography

I was an undergraduate and graduate student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College. Since 2009 I have been a Fellow of Girton College and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics. In 2020-22 I was a COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), Aarhus University.

Research

Greek and Roman intellectual culture, especially responses to Hesiod and to Plato; hexametric poetic traditions in antiquity;  'apocalyptic' and eschatological literature in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.

Publications

Key publications: 

Books

Eschatology in Antiquity (ed., with Marlow, H. & Pollmann, K.) (2021) Routledge. [42 chapters]

Playing Hesiod: The 'Myth of the Races' in Classical Antiquity (2015: paperback edn. 2019). Cambridge.

Articles and chapters

‘Locating Hesiod's daimones: above and below, near and far’, in Bakola, E., & Lunn-Rockliffe, S. (eds. forthcoming 2024) Locating the daimonic: daimones, space and place in the ancient Greek world. CHS/Ashgate.

'Anti-Roman Sibyl(s)', in Jolowicz, D. & Elsner, J. (eds. 2023) Articulating Resistance under the Roman Empire. Cambridge. 185-203

'"Vergil and Homer opened my books": the Sibylline Oracles and the non-Jewish canon', Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 32 (2022) 167-86

'Introduction' (co-authored with Marlow, H. & Pollmann, K) in (eds. 2021) Eschatology in Antiquity. Routledge. 1-15

'Hesiodic rhapsody: the Sibylline Oracles', in Fantuzzi, M., Morales, H. & Whitmarsh, T. (eds. 2021) Reception in the Greco-Roman World: Literary Studies in Theory and Practice. Cambridge. 344-70

‘Didactic and apocalyptic turns: clarity and obscurity, Homer and Hesiod in the Sibylline Oracles’, in Canevaro, L-G., & O’Rourke, D. (eds. 2019) Didactic Poetry of Greece, Rome and Beyond: Knowledge, Power, Tradition. Bloomsbury. 179-202

'The Ecology of the Sibylline Oracles’, in Hunt, A. & Marlow, H. (eds. 2019) Ecology and Theology in the Ancient Word: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Bloomsbury. 25-40

‘Hesiod transformed, parodied and assaulted: Hesiod in the Second Sophistic and early Christian thought’, in Loney, A. & Scully, S. (eds. 2018) The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod. Oxford. 395-410

'Philosophical traces in the Sibylline Oracles', in Klostergaard Peterson, A. & van Kooten, G. (eds. 2017) Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World. Leiden. 103-25

'Aratus', in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics. Ed. Dee Clayman. Oxford University Press, 25-11-2011. http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/. Substantial updates published 28-3-2014 and 26-8-2020. 

'Hesiod’s Races and your own: Socrates' 'Hesiodic' project', in Boys-Stones, G. & Haubold, J. (eds. 2010) Plato and Hesiod. Oxford. 179-99

'Aratus' Maiden and the Source of Belief' in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, Regtuit, R. F. & Wakker, G. C. (eds. 2009) Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven. 255-75

Other publications: 

Museum book

The Lawrence Room at Girton College (2019, ed. with the Lawrence Room Committee). Girton College, Cambridge. [Survey of its rationale and contents: https://issuu.com/girtoncollege/docs/the_year_2018-19_final_sc/s/156828 ]

Magazine publications

'The Sibylline Oracles: recyclable responses to crisis', Crisis: iPerspectives 3 (2023) 42-45

[https://aias.au.dk/fileadmin/www.aias.au.dk/IPerspectives/iPerspectives_magazine_Crisis_Issue_3_AIAS_Aarhus_University_DK.pdf 

'Long-range perspectives in the Iliad(2015) Omnibus 69.4-6

Wrigley Fellow, Director of Studies and College Associate Professor in Classics
Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics
Dr Helen  Van Noorden

Contact Details

Girton College
Cambridge
CB3 0JG
01223 767500 (Faculty), 760350 (College)
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations

Latest news

The Kennedy Professorship of Latin

13 June 2025

The Board of Electors to the Kennedy Professorship of Latin invite applications for this Professorship from persons whose work falls within the general field of the Professorship to take up appointment on 1 September 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. For more information see details here . Closing date: 8 September...

Masters Student wins Roman Society MA dissertation prize

28 May 2025

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Naomi Norden (King’s College) has won joint first place in the Roman Society MA dissertation prize for her 2024 MPhil thesis 'Creating complexity: Paratextuality and Intertextuality in the Works of Ausonius'. Congratulations Naomi!

St John's College Newell Lecture

27 May 2025

This year the St John's College Newell Lecture was delivered by Jackie Murray on the topic of Race and Injustice in Plato's Republic. You can watch a recording of the event here:

Marie Curie / BA postdoctoral fellowship schemes

19 May 2025

The Faculty of Classics invites potential applicants to the MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) and the British Academy’s Postdoctoral Fellowship schemes within areas relevant to our research clusters: Greek and Latin Literature, Greek and Roman Philosophy, Ancient History, C lassical Art and Archaeology, Classical and...