Cambridge Lab for Ancient World Studies (CLAWS)

CLAWS: the Cambridge Lab for Ancient World Studies

The new Cambridge Lab for Ancient World Studies is funded for five years by the University and the School of Arts & Humanities to provide a cross-disciplinary space for conversations about the ancient world. Global Antiquity is an exploding field in terms of research, teaching, and public engagement, while Cambridge is an internationally renowned centre for the study of ancient histories, cultures, and languages of all kinds; the CLAWS funding offers a forum for us to join forces.

CLAWS compiles and circulates information about ancient world events taking place across the university and runs a variety of its own events across the academic year. We welcome Annual Visiting Professors to participate in our events and advise us on our strategy (Olivier Hekster (Radboud University) in Lent Term 2025; Walter Scheidel (Stanford University) and Joy Connolly (American Council of Learned Societies) in Easter Term 2026). We plan to initiate a hiring process for post-doc positions in the 2025/2026 academic year.

8^th October 2025: 4:30pm, Room 1.11, Faculty of Classics (& on Zoom)
Annick Payne “Anatolian Hieroglyphic masterclass”
VIEWS Autumn Seminar Series
Refreshments available from 4:15pm

11^th October 2025, 5pm – 6:30pm Audit Room, King's College
Dr Rebecca Roberts ‘What might an equitable research future look like for Central Asian studies?’ (Steppe Sisters Annual Lecture)
Silk Roads events programme, Kings College.
https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/research/silk-roads-programme-kings-college

13^th October 2025, 5pm – 6pm Seminar Room, McDonald Institute
Dr José Julián Garay-Vázquez (U. of Cambridge) Using Environmental Archaeology to Revision Caribbean Indigenous Extinction Narratives
Archaeology of the Americas and Caribbean group, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

14th October 2025: 5:15pm, McDonald Seminar Room
Professor Nicholas Postgate (University of Cambridge)  “Before Bayeux: Missing Mesopotamian Tapestries”
Cambridge Ancient near East Seminar Series
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

14^th October 2025, 5 pm, Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Followed by drinks reception
 William Dalrymple, “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World”
Commentator: Josephine Quinn
Chair: Shruti Kapila
The Global Intellectual History Seminar & The Cambridge Lab for Ancient World Studies

15^th October 2025, 4:30pm – 6pm room 1.11, Faculty of Classics. Tea from 4.15 pm.
 Simona Marchesini, Grotta poesia in Apulia: hermeneutics and textuality of one of the richest epigraphic complexes in the ancient Mediterranean
E Caucus Seminar Series, Faculty of Classics, (IE Seminar)
https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/seminars/e

Previous events, from Easter Term 2025:

• 7 May Cyprian Broodbank: Mediterranean Archaeology 12 years after The Making of the Middle Sea?
• 12 May Ory Amitay: Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History
• 19 May Milinda Hoo: Eurasian localisms: A new approach to 'Hellenism in the East’