Edith’s contribution to the project analyses Aristotle’s use of imagery and literary allusions.
After teaching at universities including Cambridge, Reading, Oxford, Swarthmore, Royal Holloway, Northwestern, Leiden and King’s College London, Edith returned to Durham, where she had previously held a chair (2001-2006), in January 2022. She has published more than thirty books on ancient Greece and Rome and their continuing presences in the modern world, including Inventing the Barbarian (1989), The Theatrical Cast of Athens (2006), The Return of Ulysses (2008), Greek Tragedy (2010), Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (2013), Introducing the Ancient Greeks (2015), Aristotle’s Way (2017) and Tony Harrison, Poet of Radical Classicism (2021).
With Professor Fiona Macintosh she co-authored Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre (2005); she founded and is Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University. With Dr Henry Stead she investigated the relationship between Classics and Class in Britain 1689-1939, funded by the AHRC, and co-authored A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1660-1939 (2020).
Edith is also Principal Investigator on Aristotle beyond the Academy, a research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2022-2026) looking into Aristotle in public life since the Restoration (1660). With Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson, she co-founded and is joint leader of Advocating Classics Education, originally funded by the AHRC, which campaigns for the introduction of classical subjects in UK state schools.
Consultancy with theatres, broadcasting and journalism form other parts of her work. She is Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary Citizen of Palermo; she has been recipient of a Humboldt Research Award, a Goodwin Award from the American Society for Classical Studies, the Erasmus Prize of the European Academy (2015), the prize for graduate supervisory excellence in Arts and Humanities at King’s College London (2020-2021) and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Athens and Durham (2017, 2022).
