Professor Robin Osborne

My research ranges widely over ancient Greek history and archaeology, including epigraphy and the history of Greek art, and including issues of theory as well as substantive issues. Currently I am engaged in two particular major projects.

1)  In collaboration with Professor P.J. Rhodes (Durham) I am producing a set of three volumes to replace the volumes of ‘Greek Historical Inscriptions’ that originated with a publication by E.L. Hicks and G. Hill and were updated by M.N. Tod and then by David Lewis and Russell Meiggs. Peter Rhodes and I produced in 2003 a replacement for Tod’s second volume, covering the fourth century B.C., and in 2017 Greek Historical Inscriptions 478–404 B.C. We expect to publish a volume covering the archaic period down to the Persian wars in the early 2020s.

2) Resuming my interest in the archaeology and history of early Attica, I am currently working on a monograph on that topic within the framework of a publication project on the archaic Greek city edited by Paul Cartledge and Paul Christesen.

 I have supervised PhD dissertations over a broad range of Archaic and Classical Greek History, Archaeology and Art History. Past dissertation topics supervised include: Iron in Greece to 500 B.C., Greek settlement in Sicily, Socio-political history of classical Athens; Economy and politics of early Hellenistic Athens; Mythological wars in Greek Art; Pausanias; Violence in archaic and classical Greece; Aspects of cult in classical Greece; Greek Sanctuaries; Delphic Oracle Stories; Demography and economy of classical Athens; The nature and study of the Greek polis; Hellespont and Propontis; Art and Text; Dark Age Architecture; Athenian Funerary Reliefs; Aristophanes and Sensory Perception; Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia; Italy and Greece in the early iron age; Writing on Athenian pottery; Law and religion in the Greek world; Greeks in the Black Sea; The Phoenicians; Classical Greek Cities' relations with kings and tyrants; Offending the gods in Classical Athens; Demosthenes’ financial rhetoric; the nature of Athenian law; networks in the archaic Aegean.

Past PhD pupils include Sian Lewis (St Andrews), Franco De Angelis (UBC), Graham Oliver (Brown), Maria Pretzler (Swansea), Julia Kindt (Sydney), Ben Akrigg (Toronto), Kostas Vlassopoulos (Rethymnon), Michael Squire (Cambridge), Michael Scott (Warwick), Naoise Mac Sweeney (Leicester), Georg Gerleigner (Basel), Hannah Willey (Cambridge), Michael Loy (Cambridge).