Executive Summary

This Pl intervention builds on the work done during an IATL academic fellowship in 2013-4 for this module. In that Fellowship, the ground work was laid for students of this module to become used to debating with one another via group visits, discussions in class, via on-line forums and with invited Classicists from other universities. This intervention for the module in 2015-6 seeks to facilitate discussion between Warwick students and international, interdisciplinary, researchers on the topic of democracy and imperialism. The module has over 45 takers for 2015-6, including students who have elected to take the module from other departments. The intervention will take place over the course of 3 discussion workshops with the invited scholars, and a final video-portal debate with Classics students at Monash university. These events will help build links with Politics and International Relations outside of Warwick (John Dunn from Cambridge University), with Warwick Business School (Jonathan Neelands) as well as internationally with Universities in Queensland (where the IAS Visiting Fellow is from) and in Melbourne (Monash).

As a result, the students will not only learn from a wider array of interdisciplinary voices about the topic and consider the study of the ancient world as part of a wider thematic debate between disciplines, but also learn about different strategies for disseminating and communicating their own knowledge across traditional disciplinary divides. They will be working in groups to decide on the topics they most want to discuss with the invited academics and in preparation for the video debate with Monash, improving their skills in team work and communication. Those who are taking the module with the Greek-language option will also be working with the Digital Humanities team on a new on-line digital text coding system for the analysis of ancient texts.

In terms of legacy for departmental teaching, discussions with invited academics will be recorded and students, as well as the academics, will be invited to blog their thoughts on these interdisciplinary sessions via a Warwick discussion board, providing a permanent record for use in future teaching years. The text coding project (funded by Digital Humanities) will also create a permanent resource which can be used and improved on in future years. In terms of legacy for the students themselves, they will have a legacy from this intervention in terms of improved knowledge of the topic and practice at varied strategies for dissemination of their knowledge to interdisciplinary audiences.

Support is needed to bring one of these academics to Warwick (John Dunn the specialist in ancient and modern democracy within the Cambridge Politics and International Relations department). The IAS will cover the costs of the Visiting Fellow, Alastair Blanshard, and the Warwick Business School will be contributing in return for aid I am giving them in teaching some of their ancient world based role play sessions.