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Classics and Ancient History

Classical Association Conference 2024

Friday 22-Sunday 24 March 2024

Call for Contributions: Deadline 31 August 2023 

The Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Warwick will host the Classical Association Conference on 22-24 March 2024. The conference will take place on Warwick’s central campus (Oculus and new award-winning Faculty of Arts Buildings), close to the centre of Coventry, with its excellent rail, bus, and road transport links. University accommodation will be available for booking on campus and delegates are also welcome to make their own arrangements for off campus accommodation in Coventry, Kenilworth, or Leamington Spa. More detailed information about practical issues will be distributed when the programme is finalised in September.

We hope that our programme will include two keynote lectures – one by Yannis Hamilakis (Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern Greek Studies at Brown University) on Friday evening, and the other on Saturday evening by the new CA President, award-winning poet, translator and professor of classical languages, Anne Carson.

The organising committee would like to invite you to submit your ideas for individual papers, panels, lightning talks, and posters, as well as contributions to workshops from postgraduates, teachers, early-stage researchers, and academics alike. See further below for details on the various formats designed to encourage participation from a wide range of speakers.

Conference themes

We have identified the following themes as likely to inspire interdisciplinary and comparativist approaches but will consider other suggestions too. We welcome proposals on all topics across ancient literature and philosophy, ancient history, classical art, archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics, linguistics, and reception of the classical tradition. We aim to foster a friendly and inclusive environment, in the hope that panels will juxtapose speakers from different backgrounds, so that postgraduates, academics, and teachers can all share ideas, challenges, and enthusiasms.

  • Beyond Greece and Rome
  • Ecocriticism, Ecopoetics, and the Environment
  • Medical Humanities
  • Migration and Mobility
  • Memory and Monumentality
  • Performance Cultures
  • Race, Gender, & Class
  • Temporality

Types of Session

Anyone can submit a proposal. Once you have selected your topic, please consider which of the following you would like to do:

  • present an individual paper
  • contribute to one of the workshops below
  • give a lightning talk
  • share a poster
  • or form a panel of papers.

An individual paper is a 20-minute paper, which if accepted will then be allocated to a panel of other similar papers by the organising committee.

Workshops on the following themes will have more emphasis upon discussion and interaction:

  • Accelerated learning of ancient languages in schools, summer schools, and HE
  • Ancient coins and tokens
  • Performing and producing drama
  • Public engagement: methods and approaches
  • Race & diversity
  • Supporting students moving from school to university
  • Teaching in translation
  • Teaching with inscriptions

A lightning talk differs from a traditional paper in prioritising discussion over presentation. The discussion-centred format offers presenters the opportunity to explore new ideas and new approaches with the help of feedback from the audience. Each presenter is allocated five minutes for a presentation and ten minutes for discussion. The discussion-centred format offers presenters the opportunity to explore new ideas and new approaches with the help of feedback from the audience. These may be embedded in panels or in workshops.

Posters will offer the opportunity to display your work throughout the conference in the main conference venue, where you can informally discuss your ideas with delegates during refreshment breaks. Posters may be used as a way of presenting ideas that are more effectively formulated in a graphic than oral format. Specific advice on formatting your poster will be offered after the conference programme is organised. A poster may also be more narrow in scope than a presentation. Posters on both pedagogical and research themes are welcome.

Panels are 2-hour sessions which can be structured in different ways. For example, 4 papers may be presented, which focus on a common topic or theme, with each paper lasting for 20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion. Or you may structure your panel so as to include lightning talks (15 minutes in total – see above) alongside papers. Preference will be given to panels that engage with the conference themes, listed above. Please aim for diversity in the composition of your panel’s speakers.

Speaker Information

We hope that all speakers will be able to attend in person, but we hope that panels, talks, and workshops will take place in a hybrid format.

You can submit more than one proposal and be involved in more than one panel/workshop. Please send your multiple submissions in separate emails.

Please note that submission of a proposal is not a guarantee of acceptance. In order to keep conference costs as low as possible for everyone, all speakers and chairs must pay the conference fee (which will include standard and discounted rates). Online participants will also be required to pay a conference fee, to help cover costs of streaming. Exact rates will be confirmed in the autumn.

What to do next

Please submit your proposals to CAConference2024@warwick.ac.uk by 17.00 on 31 August 2023. No late submissions will be accepted. All other enquiries should also be directed to this e-mail address.

Your email must include the following details depending upon the type of session you are proposing:

What to include

  1. Panel proposal:
  • Panel title
  • A 650-word panel statement, offering an overview of the panel. Please identify, where appropriate, how the panel fits into the conference themes.
  • Organizer(s), identifying the Panel Chair
  • The name, academic institution/school, paper title for each speaker + 300-word abstract.
  • Panels may consist of a combination of lightning talks and papers, within a 2-hour framework.
  1. Submission of a paper:

You are welcome to submit an individual abstract for a 20-minute paper, which if accepted will then be allocated to a panel by the organising committee.

  • Your name, academic institution/school, paper title
  • 300-word abstract of your paper, indicating, where appropriate, how it fits into the conference’s themes.
  1. Lightning talks:
  • Your name, academic institution/school, paper title
  • 250-word outline of the ideas you would like to explore, outlining any particular challenges for exploration by the audience. Please indicate, where appropriate, how these fit into the conference’s themes.
  1. Posters:
  • Your name, academic institution/school, poster title
  • 300-word outline of the theme or material to be discussed in the poster. Please indicate, where appropriate, how these fit into the conference’s themes.
  1. Workshops:
  • Name, academic institution/school
  • Outline of proposed format (interactive activities / discussion / paper presentation / lightning talk)
  • Identify which workshop your intervention will belong to.

Panels will be assembled by the end of September. We look forward to receiving your ideas.

To assist with scheduling, when submitting your email, please let us know if you will NOT be able to attend a particular day of the Conference (e.g. Friday, Saturday or Sunday).

Warwick Organising Committee

Alison Cooley, Micaela Canopoli, David Fearn, Paul Grigsby, Francesca Modini, Victoria Rimell, Conor Trainor