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.

  • April 30, 2026, 3.15pm in the Classics Faculty, room 1.04
    Demetra Kasimis (POLIS) and Giulia Maltagliati (Classics), Theorising Opacity, Politicising the Oikos: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue
    A conversation that will explore the ways in which the household (oikos) operates as a site of anxiety that resists straightforward narratives and transparent readings.
    Tea from 3pm.
  • May 11, 2026, 4–6pm in the English Faculty, room G-R 06/07
    Walter Scheidel (Stanford), Ancient History as Universal History
    (Joint CLAWS/Global Middle Ages Event)
     
  • May 26 2-6pm in the Classics Faculty, room G21
    The Futures of Antiquity: a panel discussion with Walter Scheidel (Stanford) and Joy Connolly (ACLS)
    Commentators: Peter Frankopan (Oxford), Philipp von Rummel (FU Berlin), Amy Russell (Brown) & Greg Woolf (ISAW)
    To be followed by a reception.
     
  • July 4-5, 2026 in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, rooms 8/9 & 10 
    Empires & Ecologies of Afro-Eurasia at the end of Antiquity.
    An AMES/CLAWS/Classics Conference
    Programme and Registration: https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/events/empires-ecologies-afro-eurasia-end-antiquity
     
  • May 28, 2026, 7pm, Palmerston Room, St John’s College
    The Newell Classical Event
    Joy Connolly (American Council for Learned Societies), with Shushma Malik (Classics), Meeting the conditions of freedom: Roman political thought in an age of tyranny and greed

Seminars and events across the University, latest Termcard

Links to Ancient World Studies centres/initiatives across the University 

Previous events:

  • 11th March 2026, Damian Robinson, The View from the Port: The Maritime Façade of Alexandria and the Royal Port of Antirhodos Island from the Ptolemaic to the Roman period
  • 14 October 2025, William Dalrymple, “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World”
  • 7 May 2025, Cyprian Broodbank: Mediterranean Archaeology 12 years after The Making of the Middle Sea?
  • 12 May 2025, Ory Amitay: Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History
  • 19 May 2025, Milinda Hoo: Eurasian localisms: A new approach to 'Hellenism in the East’