In March of 2021 the AAIA, in collaboration with CCANESA, The Chau Chak Wing Museum, Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies, and the University of Sydney Departments of Archaeology and Classics and Ancient History, hosted an international online conference ‘Modern’ Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity. What had begun life as a series of informal discussions between myself and Louise Pryke around a public outreach event on the theme of women in antiquity exploded into a dynamic, global affair which attracted contributions from over 60 speakers from more than a dozen countries. The conference was held over two intense 12-hour days on the 5th and 6th of March.

The response to the call for papers was both humbling and overwhelming, and we discovered the exciting degree of connectivity that an online conference can bring. Freed of the (often prohibitive) costs of international travel we were able to accommodate the voices of emerging scholars from far-flung nations. We were inspired by the work of Dinara Assanova (Kazakh National Pedagogical University) who has single-handedly created a national Online Museum of Women of Kazakhstan. Her work is both a means of preserving Kazakh heritage and amassing a wealth of sources for an expanding research archive. Oluwafunminiyi Raheem (Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding) sparked tremendous discussion with his research into votive practices, dedicated to Olokun Seniade in in Ile-Ife, Southwest Nigeria. Speakers overcame the tyranny of distance and international timezones to share their research. Tais Pagoto Belo (LARP Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Saõ Paulo) presented her work on early Imperial Roman coinage at 3am Brazilian time in what was for her a second language, an impressive feat.

Beyond the demonstrations of stamina and linguistic flexibility, we were pleased to showcase impressive research by both emerging and established scholars, who were prepared to cross disciplinary boundaries and engage in enriching discussions and debates. Graeme Miles (University of Tasmania) examined the challenges Eunapius faced in his efforts ‘Representing Sosipatra in Eunapius of Sardis’ Lives of Philosophers and Sophists, while Lakshmi R (Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) wrestled with the use of forms of Naṅkai or Naṅkaiyār in early medieval references to royal women in Tamil epigraphy.

Heidi Koepp-Junk (University of Trier) not only delivered a thought-provoking paper on ‘Women, Music and Eroticism in Ancient Egypt’ but went on to treat us with an impromptu performance, singing in ancient Egyptian, while playing a replica ancient Egyptian lute.

Discussion time at the end of sessions, and during break periods was rich with debate. Amjad Alshalan (King Saud University) revealed a razor-sharp scholarly intellect that marked her out as an emerging scholar to follow. Her paper ‘Euripides’ Medea: An Exploration of Male Representation of Women’, was a mere prelude to the pearls of wisdom she shared during discussions. Similarly Athenodora Nguyen received kudos as the non-speaker delegate who posed the most astute questions. Session after session they cut to the core of tangled issues of gender representation and interpretation, with a wit and humour that encouraged speakers to reveal their deeper thoughts on their chosen topics.
The first day of the conference concluded with the first of two keynote lectures. Dr Rachel Pope (University of Liverpool) delivered a powerhouse public lecture, hosted by the Chau Chak Wing Museum. With devastating precision, she laid bare the lack of representation of female scholars in the discipline of archaeology, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, and the deep impact this had on how the archaeological record – as it relates to women, especially powerful women – has been interpreted. She went on to explore the challenges that women working in the field face today, and the ways in which this continues to impact on how we understand the women of the ancient past. Beyond simply quantifying the nature and extent of these problems Dr Pope offered ameliorating measures such as support for women with caring responsibilities and critical re-appraisals of past interpretations of the archaeological evidence to offer more holistic understandings of the diverse experiences and roles of women who lived in the deep past.

At the commencement of the second day’s proceedings Professor Gina Luria Walker (New York School) delivered our second keynote lecture, outlining the New Historia initiative which redresses the ignorance of earlier female figures and the erasure of female historians through the creation of new biographies of female historians. She began this project with the British historian Mary Hays, whose own work Female Biography: or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries set the course for Gina’s efforts to put women back into the histories from which they have long been erased, overlooked or underplayed.

This theme continued through the day as speakers examined the ways in which women’s roles and experiences are ripe for re-evaluation. Valentina Limina (Università di Pisa) shone new light on the shifting reception of Arria from Roman times to the Renaissance, while Pablo Varona Rubio (Università degli Studi di Perugia) re-examined the roles of women in small Roman communities through a case study of Varia Gestiana Urvinum Hortense.

Staff and associates of the AAIA were well-represented at the conference. Beatrice McLoughlin delivered a paper on the Women’s Works and Days project which incorporates ethnoarchaeological research to rediscover the agency of female potters in Cyprus. Andrew Hazewinkel challenged perceptions of masculinity and femininity through the myth of Herakles enslavement by the Lydian queen Omphale and their switching of conventional gender roles. For my own research, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to share research into perceptions of female power and influence through reception of the British queens Boudicca and Cartimandua during the Roman conquest of Britain.

The conference concluded its second day with a publication session during which speakers were put in direct contact with the editors of the book series Women in Ancient Cultures at University of Liverpool Press. Led by Commissioning Editor, Claire Litt, the team outlined the entire process from proposal through to finished publication, answering many questions from our speakers.

It was a true joy to be able to host such an expanisve conference and I am incredibly thankful to Dr Louise Pryke, Dr Emma Barlow and Candace Richards for their dilligent hard work, patience and support in our endeavours to bring the conference to life.

A final word goes to our speakers who offered their gratitude in numerous emails of thanks in the days following the event:

All AWAWS members are invited to our Anniversary Panel discussion celebrating the first 10 years of AWAWS. Members of the panel will include the founders of AWAWS and long-term members of the Executive Committee, including the Foundation President. The panellists will discuss the genesis of AWAWS, the challenges over the past 10 years, chart the highlights and discuss what the future might hold for the association. Discussion will be opened to the membership at the end. The panel will coincide with our annual AGM. The new committee, the winner of the annual research grant and this year's virtual bouquets will be announced afterwards. 

The Sydney chapter of AWAWS is hosting a panel discussion on disablism in Ancient World Studies on Tuesday 29 Jun 2021, 17:00 AEST (UTC + 10). We are delighted to be joined by five ancient world scholars living with a disability. Our incredible panel includes

​Alexandra F. Morris is currently a PhD student in history and the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Law’s Postgraduate Student Representative at Teesside University. Her PhD research focuses on disability during the Hellenistic/Ptolemaic Period. Other research interests include making museums more accessible and inclusive for the disabled community, Ptolemaic Egypt, Alexander the Great, and ancient Egyptian and Greek art, medicine, politics, and religious practices. She has an MA in Museum Studies from New York University, and an MA in Near Eastern Languages & Civilisations (Egyptology) from the University of Pennsylvania. Her BA is in Archaeological Studies, Anthropology, and Art History with minors in Classics and history from SUNY Potsdam.  
 
More from Alexandra
https://therockstaranthropologist.com/the-archaeology-of-disability-an-interview-with-alexandra-morris/
https://research.tees.ac.uk/en/persons/alexandra-morris-morris

This workshop is intended to be an introduction to making research and teaching practice and research outputs accessible. It will cover the basics of classroom design and alternative assessments, as well as the core accessibility features of PowerPoint and some considerations when publishing and disseminating research. The workshop will be run by members of AWAWS, and we invite anyone in Ancient World Studies in Australasia who is interested to attend this event.

Date: Friday 25th June 2021
Time: 11:00 AEST (UTC + 10)
Duration: 1 hour
Format: online, via Zoom
Registration: via Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/awaws-workshop-accessible-research-and-teaching-practices-tickets-157441274089)

We are delighted to be joined by five ancient world scholars living with a disability from Australasia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, who will cover a range of topics about navigating Ancient World Studies and academia and studying disability in the ancient world. The panel discussion will be followed by a live question and answer session, and we invite anyone in Ancient World Studies who is interested to attend this event.

Date: Tuesday 29th June 2021
Time: 17:00 AEST (UTC + 10)
Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes (including a short break)
Format: online, via Zoom
Registration: via Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/awaws-panel-disability-in-ancient-world-studies-tickets-157442742481)
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Please note: these sessions will be recorded, and closed captions (CC) will be enabled on Zoom. A copy of the recording, PowerPoint, and edited transcript will be made available after the workshop upon request to [email protected].

For our upcoming panel discussion on disablism in Ancient World Studies we are delighted to be joined by five ancient world scholars living with a disability. Our incredible panel includes:

• Alexandra F. Morris
• David Chapman
• Kyle Lewis Jordan
• Prof. Isabel Ruffell
• Mason Shrader

Every day NEXT WEEK (14-18 Jun) we will be introducing our panel profiles. Stay tuned to hear more about these wonderful scholars via Twitter and Facebook!

And make sure to RSVP for the panel Tues 29/06/2021, 17:00 AEST (UTC + 10). It will be online, via zoom.

We are seeking contributors for our History of Women in Ancient World Studies blog. The blog aims to capture the often neglected stories of women in the fields of classics, ancient history, archaeology, ancient languages, and adjacent study areas in our region of the world. These women could be academics, independent scholars, teachers, mentors, museum workers, administrators, philanthropists, and supporters who through their generosity, ideas or scholarship contributed to the flourishing of ancient world studies in Australia and New Zealand. We are also interested in posts on methodologies and research projects that aim to highlight the contributions of women in the field. Posts can be in the form of biographies, personal reflections or interviews - and if you have another idea, we’d love to hear it.

If you are interested in contributing and have an idea for a subject please get in touch with an outline of the article you would like to contribute. If you are interested in being part of this project, but don’t know where to begin, that’s ok! Get in touch with blog co-ordinator Candace Richards either via [email protected] or [email protected]. We can help you discover more about women in the field and find an appropriate subject who you want to learn and write about. Student members are particularly encouraged to get involved.
 
If you have any questions or feedback on the blog so far, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Just leave us a comment below!

Last year AWAWS Brisbane hosted The Cancelled Conference, and asked postgraduate students to put their cancelled conference papers to good use. The conference was a great success and one of the most rewarding aspects of the conference was the feedback presenting postgraduate students received from senior academics who attended. 

This year, in partnership with the AWAWS Academic Mentoring Program, AWAWS Brisbane is hosting The Cancelled Conference 2.0: a postgraduate conference designed to give students the opportunity to receive feedback on their work from established academics who are invested in supporting and fostering postgraduate scholarship.

There will be a number of AWAWS mentors in attendance and chairing the panels. This will ensure every presenter has the opportunity to receive critical and constructive feedback from leading academics in their field. There will also be a plenary discussion panel about the AWAWS Academic Mentoring Program. This session will highlight the benefits of academic mentoring and showcase positive academic outcomes achieved through the program by past mentors and mentees. 

Who is this conference for?

• Postgraduate students involved in the AWAWS mentoring program who would like to showcase their work to their mentors, their peers, and the broader community of ancient world studies
• Postgraduate students who are interested in joining the AWAWS mentoring program and would like to see what the mentoring program can do for them
• Postgraduates students seeking critical and constructive feedback from academics in their field 

This conference is open to all AWAWS postgraduate members. It will be held online to give students an opportunity to meet and mingle with academics in their field of study from across Australia and New Zealand who might be otherwise inaccessible due to distance. 
​
Date and Location 
The Cancelled Conference 2.0 will be held between Wednesday 29 September – Thursday 30 September 2021.
The conference will be held virtually through Zoom. Once the program has been finalised information on how to register and attend each session will be circulated. Please save the date in the meantime. 
Conditions 

• 20 minute paper + 10 minute question time 
• Paper submissions are open to all AWAWS postgraduate members: renew or join here.
• There is no set theme for this conference, all topics are welcome 
• Audience attendance is free and open to the public
• We stress that the aim of the conference is to support and encourage postgraduate research, and we invite all postgraduates, academics, and industry professionals to attend and share this aim. 

How to apply
To apply for the conference please send an abstract and your completed submission form to AWAWS Brisbane [email protected] - Submissions are due by Monday 26 July. 

If you have any further questions about the conference, you can contact us via our email address or Facebook page. 
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @awawsbrisbane 

​Conference Convenors
Brianna Sands, MPhil candidate (UQ), Co-chair AWAWS Brisbane Chapter
Tyla Cascaes, PhD candidate (UQ), Co-chair AWAWS Brisbane Chapter ​

​The AWAWS Academic Mentoring Program is now in its second year and we are seeking expressions of interest from potential mentees interested participating in the 2021 program.
 
The program, based on the Spectrum Academic Mentoring Program, aims to establish a supportive mentoring culture and provide opportunities to connect individuals from diverse backgrounds and with different levels of experience from across the Australasian ancient world studies community. 
 
The establishment of mentoring relationships provides numerous benefits, fostering personal and professional growth. By sharing knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours, a mentoring relationship can:

• Support the definition and pursuit of goals
• Expand perspectives and strengthen self-development plans
• Increase self-awareness and personal growth
• Enhance motivation and work satisfaction

 
There are 31 mentors in the program with capacity to mentor over 70 mentees across a broad range of areas, from research and learning and teaching, to career progression within and beyond academia. Check out the Meet Our Mentors page for detailed mentor profiles.
                                                                                          
To participate in the program you will need to submit an Expression of Interest form (download below) to the program’s interim coordinator, Sarah Midford, at [email protected]. There is no deadline to submit EoIs, but each mentor has a limit on the number of mentees they can take on. If you have a particular mentor you would like to work with, it is advisable to get in earlier rather than later.
 
You will need to be a current member to participate. If you aren’t sure of your membership status you can email [email protected] to check. If you need to renew, then visit the Membership page to join.
 
We look forward to welcoming you into the program! If you have any questions at all, just get in touch with Sarah Midford. 

Professor Gina Walker delivered this lecture as part of our recent 'Modern' Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity ​conference. In this lecture Professor Walker juxtaposed the stark reality of millennia of ignorance about earlier female figures and their authority as knowers in the context of sixty years of contemporary Feminist Historical Recovery that '‘Modern’ Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity' celebrates. Dr Walker described the New Historia initiative she directs at The New School with a global collaborative of researchers who are producing authoritative “female biographies” of attested female figures on various platforms for new audiences. She asked, does the avalanche of fresh data about women demand new knowledge-ordering systems that for the first time include a female dimension?

Dr Rachel Pope gave a rousing keynote lecture at our recent conference 'Modern' Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity. This lecture provides a perspective from the UK and Europe on how preventing women’s access to academia and the heritage sector, both historically, and in our contemporary workplace culture, has impacted our understanding of women in the past. We discovered the irony that, under the banner of objective practice, late twentieth century archaeologists actively erased past women, or wrote them specifically into domestic roles. We investigated the mechanism through which scholars sought to undermine women’s authority in the past, and in the writing too of disciplinary histories, in favour of patriarchal mythmaking, and how that practice lingers on today. We saw how a generation of young scholars had to fight to correct this inherited academic problem in archaeological practice, outside the mainstream, and how a new generation of scholars are now working beyond binary, developing applied method in gender archaeology, to discover the past more as it was, and less in our making.