Classics Beyond Borders
Establishing collaborative links with universities across the world, particularly in parts of the world that were formerly under British rule, forms a crucial part of attempts to reclaim Classics from its colonial legacy and reinvigorate the discipline. The Faculty has a standing commitment to this work, which involves direct engagement with the history of Classics across the world and to ensuring the future of Classics as an area of inquiry open to all.
The Classics Beyond Borders project is an important part of the Faculty of Classics’ commitment to ensuring that the discipline thrives as a more diverse and inclusive scholarly endeavour and demonstrates our determination to take concrete positive steps to foster dialogue with Classicists across the world. We have been supported by the ALBORADA fund from Cambridge Africa, the A. G. Leventis Foundation, and the Faculty of Classics. The project is part of the Global Humanities Initiative.
The project is led by Dr Frisbee Sheffield who is supported by Dr Rosanna Omitowoju, Daisy Belfield Santos, and Professor James Warren.
1. RESEARCH
In 2022-3 we began this collaboration with a set of joint seminars and conferences focused on Plato on community, a topic in which researchers in Cambridge and in Ghana were already interested. We collaborated on the core research project: “Plato and Political Community” by means of a hybrid seminar on Plato’s Republic, and two conferences.
Research by colleagues in Ghana includes work on Plato’s Republic and problems of African Leadership, Plato’s Laws and Postcolonial development in Ghana, farming collectives in Ghana as a case study for the reciprocal skills sharing advocated in Book 2 of Plato’s Republic, Afro-communitarian philosophy applied to the relationship between the individual and the community; and whether the notion of Ubuntu can shed light on the ethics of care in the Republic.
Professor Kofi Ackah, our international co-lead on this project from Ghana, argues that Plato’s Republic is especially relevant for discussions of modern community building, the nature of leadership and the relationship between the individual and the community. He has argued that this collaboration provides:
“An opportunity to reflect on alternative perspectives to Western readings of Plato’s political philosophy, which depend largely on the uncontested assumption that individual liberties constitute the highest political value and that institutions and practices are to be judged by their success in promoting or achieving them”.
Colleagues in Ghana have helped to shift entrenched questions when approaching Plato’s Republic and to reconsider Plato as a communitarian, not a totalitarian, thinker with much to contribute to modern discussions of politics and community. We hope to showcase this new research in a volume provisionally entitled Re-reading Plato’s Republic: Lessons from Ghana.
We showcased some of this work at a panel presentation at the annual Classical Association Conference in 2023 in a panel called “Classics Beyond Borders: Plato on the Nature and Value of Community”.
Two papers from Cambridge scholars and two papers from colleagues from Ghana were delivered on the topic of Plato and community. We presented new work on leading African philosophers, such as the writings of the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and leading exponents of modern African Philosophy, such as Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu.
Strengthening Capacity
To support this research, we have increased access in Ghana to monographs and journal provision in collaboration with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Through our contacts with the Classics and Philosophy editors at each Press we have ensured that the University of Ghana has access to Cambridge Core Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, and Oxford Scholarly Editions.
Cambridge University Press has donated numerous books to increase the Classics provision in the Libraries of the University of Ghana, and the University of Cape Coast.
Research Outputs
Stephen Oppong Peprah (forthcoming with Bloomsbury) Plato on the Individual, the Polis, and Political Authority in the Republic
Michael Okyere Asante (forthcoming with CUP), Decolonising Classics: Lessons from Ghana
Richmond Kwesi and Frisbee Sheffield (forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Classics), ‘Nkrumah’s Harmonising Model of Decolonisation: Putting Greek Philosophy to Work’
2. LANGUAGE TEACHING SUPPORT
Languages remain one of the biggest barriers for access for African students seeking entry into UK and US graduate programs in Classics and this strand of the project is designed to fill that gap. We have been assisting the University of Ghana's teaching programme in classical languages by arranging an online course for postgraduate students. Rosanna Omitowoju leads this strand of the project with Daisy Belfield Santos and they have worked together with their Ghanaian students to produce translations of Greek and Latin texts into local African languages.
Dr Richmond Kwesi, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana, writes:
“Our collaboration with Cambridge has seen a significant increase in student's interests in Classics. For the first time since the merger of the two departments of Philosophy and Classics, we had more students selecting to do Classics instead of Philosophy at the City Campus in the last academic year. In addition, we currently have nine students who have completed their undergraduate degrees serving as Teaching Assistants in Classics for their mandatory National Service - the highest number in the 14yrs of the merger. All nine students participated in the online Cambridge-UG Greek and Latin courses, and are preparing to pursue graduate studies in Classics after their National Service. With the access to Latin and Greek provided by Cambridge, these students are more confident on placement in reputable graduate programs around the globe.
One of the merits of this collaboration has been the surge in research on ancient philosophy and the comparative works on African thinking and the classics. While the philosophy section has primarily focused on ethics, political philosophy, and African philosophy, there were no attempts to engage in research that straddles both disciplines. This has mainly changed with the initiative on Plato and the Political community which has now engaged researchers not only from the two sections of the department but collaboration with colleagues at Cambridge. The upsurge in the interests of students in Classics, the opportunities available to our students to pursue graduate programs outside Ghana, the quest to pursue interdisciplinary research that further coalesces the two sections of the department, the scholarships and fellowships to faculty - all of these could not have happened without the Cambridge Classics Beyond Borders Initiative”.
3. CONFERENCES
2023, September, University of Ghana ‘Plato and Political Community’. Colleagues from Ghana and Cambridge presented new work on Plato in dialogue with leading African philosophers, such as the writings of the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and leading exponents of modern African Philosophy, such as Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu
2024, June, Cambridge ‘Ancient Philosophy and Science Beyond Borders’. Speakers from a range of disciplines (including Classics, Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Science, Theology, and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) discussed a range of texts, ideas, and figures from ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Jewish, and Mesopotamian traditions of thought. 
2024, September, The Classical Association of Ghana, hosted the 2024 Classics Beyond Borders conference, which was supported by the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, the University of Toronto and the Loeb Foundation.
This was the largest such conference ever held in West Africa, both in terms of numbers and diversity. It not only had the biggest participation from Africa, but it brought together scholars from across Africa (five countries) - many of whom had not previously met each other (East Africans attended for the first time), with scholars from across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. This historic conference made national television and left participants with a sense that Classics is not just surviving in Africa, but thriving. Read Dr Sheffield's blog for Cambridge-Africa (April 2024).
Click on the image to watch the News item.
A translation of the report by Michael Okyere Asante is also available.
This was a two-day event with three keynote speakers (Professor Rachel Barney from the University of Toronto, Professor Kofi Ackah from the University of Ghana, and Professor Dan Orrells from Kings College London), various panels to integrate the 41 papers and 106 participants. It began with a panel involving high ranking officials from the University of Ghana: the Provost of the College of Humanities, Professor Joseph Awetori Yaro and the Dean of the School of Arts, Professor Wazi Apoh and the Head of Department of Philosophy and Classics, Dr Richmond Kwesi. This showed the level of support at all levels of the university for the work being done by the Classical Association of Ghana to foster a vibrant and international Classics community.
The conference was remarkable for its collaborative vitality. Participants of all ‘ranks and levels’ engaged in an open, receptive, intellectually rigorous, and warm and supportive manner.
The conference delivered a vivid sense of what Classical topics are of interest currently in a range of African countries, which included: Roman History, ancient Greek Philosophy, Greek drama, Latin literature, Greek history, the history of Classics in Malawi, the history of Classics in Ghana, the Romans in North Africa, Africa’s Classical World and Classical Reception.
Distinctive approaches included an emphasis on relevance and comparative studies. There were a number of papers that used the Classics to address Ghana’s contemporary political challenges (issues of leadership, public sector corruption, democracy and law). Comparative approaches included putting into dialogue Ghanaian philosophers (such as Wiredu and Nkrumah) with Plato, the legal framework of Ghana with Livy and Cicero, traditional African religiosity with Greek tragedy, and Brazilian speech performance which uses Classical stories to bridge indigenous culture with contemporary realities.
Michael Okyere Asante, member of the organising committee for this conference said:
“This collaboration with the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge and their Classics Beyond Borders initiative has opened avenues for a renewed interest in the discipline of Classics across all institutional levels at the University of Ghana. We now need to consolidate the energy and interest this conference has generated and expand our networks more widely. To this end, we invite colleagues from the UK to establish relationships with students and colleagues in Africa”.
Dr. Richmond Kwesi, the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Classics added the following:
“Classics has been fighting for its existence in the University, despite the large volume of student numbers, and [since the conference] this collaboration has been noted at high levels within the university; it has strengthened the profile of the subject and its relevance. The conference generated international interest – not only the scholars who attended this conference, but other scholars in neighbouring disciplines have since shown interest in collaborating with UG”.
In 2025, prompted by Hendrik Lorenz, Princeton University joined the collaboration, generously supported by Princeton’s Africa World Initiative and supported the First International Graduate Conference at the University of Ghana, in September 2025. You can download the conference programme .
4. MENTORSHIP SCHEME
The initiative identifies and nurtures talent from Ghana by pairing up graduates with researchers and graduate students in Cambridge to increase access to research materials, funding possibilities, and to develop research projects. Current projects include work on the social infrastructure of Plato’s Laws (Abraham Lincoln Nutsugah) and ‘Aristotle’s Ethical Dilemma: An Appraisal from Peisistratus’ Methods of Power Ascendancy’ (Peter Kwame Womber). Abraham is the first graduate student to receive a PhD in Classics from the University of Ghana.
5. POSTDOCTORAL FUNDING and VISITING SCHOLARSHIPS
We funded a post-doctoral researchers working on a Ghanaian philosopher (a former enslaved person) who wrote philosophical treatises in Latin. Stephen Oppong Peprah, who completed an MPhil in Cambridge and a PhD in Prague will be a Bye-Fellow at Girton college for 2022-3 and will provide assistance to the project while working on his own research on Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703-1759). Amo was perhaps the first African to study in a modern European University. Until recently, Amo’s philosophy was little known. The motivation behind Stephen’s research on Amo is to make his philosophical works accessible to a wider audience, especially Ghanaian students and researchers.
We also funded a Visiting scholarship for Michael Okyere Asante from Ghana who came for over a moth to stay at Clare Hall. He delivered the 2023 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lecture this year to the Faculty of Classics on Global Classics in Africa, and disseminated his research more widely to students and staff alike.
His lecture, ‘Decolonising Classics: lessons from Africa’, can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X149IAg2TcY.
Abraham Lincoln Nutsugah will be visiting this May 2026 for a one-month research stay to develop a project on Plato’s Laws. This is jointly funded by the Global Humanities Initiative’s Mobility Scheme and the Classics Beyond Borders project.
6. FUTURE PLANS
The Classical Association of Ghana plays a vital role in promoting and preserving the study of Classics in Ghana. Its members are passionate about the growth and promotion of Classical studies, fostering academic research, organizing educational events, and supporting the teaching of Latin and Greek. They welcome further international collaborations to build on the strength of this recent conference.
For further inquiries, please contact Professor Peter Grant, University of Cape Coast: pgrant@ucc.edu.gh
Richmond Kwesi, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana has written as follows:
“Our department aims at pursuing research that advances the development of humanity and society through critical analysis, reflection, and understanding of our historical, existential, and intellectual experiences. We want to make our department at the University of Ghana the hub for African Classics and Classics in Africa, which should lead to the establishment of an African Centre for Classical Studies. I am glad that this collaboration with Faculty of Classics at Cambridge has brought us closer to the realization this goal. We are interested in three broad kinds of collaborative enterprises: (i) jointly hosting series of events, workshops, conferences; (ii) fostering a relationship involving staff and student mobility; and (iii) research collaborations, and joint projects and publications”.
To collaborate with Classicists and Philosophers at the University of Ghana, contact rkwesi@ug.edu.gh
2026 Classical Association of Ghana: Classics at the Crossroads' event: September 3rd and 4th 2026:
If you are interested in submitting an abstract for this conference, please do so via this link by May 15 2026:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PX2i1AD1G3G6HUsiADror-ZMIl9Jxy0HBw_GpeNCFKU/edit?ts=69c6afe6