About

I hold a BA in Classics (Literae Humaniores) from Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, which I completed in 2020. I then studied for an MSt in Greek and Latin Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford (2020-2021), which was funded jointly by Balliol and the Faculty of Classics, before starting a PhD in Classical Languages and Literature, funded by the AHRC, Clarendon Fund, and Balliol College (2021-2024). My doctoral thesis investigated the reception of Euripides’ Medea in South Africa from the 19^th to the 21^st century. I joined the University of Warwick as a Sessional Lecturer in 2024, teaching Greek language and ancient Greek theatre. I also teach Greek and Latin language, literature, and reception at the University of Oxford, and work at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD). I use he/him pronouns.

Research interests

I specialise in classical reception and am broadly interested in how Greek and Roman literature, art, and culture continue to exert an influence on modern literature, particularly theatre and poetry. I am especially interested in the reception of Greek tragedy in the Global South, which forms the foundation of my doctoral research. I am fascinated by the complexities, problems, and potentials of subversive, decolonial adaptations of Graeco-Roman material that has historically been the instrument of the colonial oppressor, and my research seeks to explore how this colonial history has been interrogated and overturned by radical reworkings. I have written about the decolonisation of the academy for the Classical Reception Studies Network, and my first publication (forthcoming in 2025) explores the reception of Herakles outside of the Western canon in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

My doctoral thesis examines this topic through a focus on performances of Euripides’ Medea over the past 150 years in South Africa, investigating the tragedy’s entanglement with colonialism and racialisation and the ways in which it has been gradually liberated from its imperial connections, utilising decolonial and postcolonial theory. I focus on how the motives, actions, themes, language, and characterisation have been adapted to speak to South African audiences across temporal, social, and political circumstances in multi-lingual drama. In my next research project, I hope to explore how both Greek tragedy and comedy were politicised by artists of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement during the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa, in relation to decolonising receptions across the Global South.

Publications

Kershaw, Leo. 2024. ‘The Academic in the Archive: Tracing the Workshopping Process of Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles.’ Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South(digital exhibit).

Kershaw, Leo. 2022. ‘“Beware of the neo-colonial wolf”: World Reception, Universality, and Decolonising the Academy.’ Classical Reception Studies Network, Realigning Reception Takeover (21 October).

Kershaw, Leo. (forthcoming, 2025). ‘Herakles Outside the Western Canon’ in George W.M. Harrison, A Companion to Hercules (Blackwell-Wiley).

My current research projects being prepared for publication include chapters for Intersectional Medeas, edited by Zina Giannopoulou and Jesse Weiner, on ‘Radical performativity in Third World Bunfight’s MedEia’, and a co-written chapter with Daniel Whittle on ‘Excavating subterranean voices from the archive’ for Archiving and Performing Antiquity: Reshaping the Canon, edited by Justine McConnell, Cécile Dudouyt, and Sofia Frade.

Teaching and supervision