JACT Durham Greek & Latin Summer School
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Joe Watson - Advanced Latin Tutor & Director of Studies
I’m the Director of Studies and Advanced Latin Tutor at the JACT Latin and Greek Summer School and have been teaching various levels of Latin here for eight years (all the way from Intermediate to Advanced!); previously, I was a schoolteacher in Hartlepool. I’m a trained Latinist and completed my PhD in 2022 at Durham University; in my day job, I work at the University of Warwick as a Teaching Fellow in Latin Literature and Language. My research centres on early Imperial Latin poetry, especially Ovid's Metamorphoses and anthologies such as the Carmina Priapea and Appendix Virgiliana—topics on which I publish regularly. My first book, Incest and Bestiality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A Poetics of Perversion, will be coming out soon with Cambridge University Press. I also research and publish on queer Classical reception in twentieth-century poetry, especially in the poetry of Renée Vivien, Frank O'Hara and, above all, C.P. Cavafy.
Matthew Barton - Intermediate 1 Greek Tutor
Having studied Classics and Modern Languages at undergraduate level, I completed a PGCE in Classics with Latin and have experience teaching Latin, Classical Greek and Classical Civilisation across a number of secondary schools in the UK, including City of London Freemen's School where I currently work. I am interested in a range of Classical areas from epic to love elegy, Athenian to Senecan drama, but perhaps above all I love to trace Classical influence across cultures and time periods, particularly in German thinkers and writers such as Winckelmann and Büchner.
Janet Watson - Homer & Tragedy Reading Group Tutor
I teach Greek, and have been coming to the Durham Summer School for ten years now. It's a wonderful week of camaraderie over all things classical, from classes, to afternoon seminars and evening lectures. At last year's summer school I took the Advanced group, and this year I am leading the newly-formed Homer & Tragedy Reading Group. There is so much to love about Classics, packing under one umbrella ancient languages, literature, history, philosophy, myth, art, archaeology - all human endeavour is there to be explored; my particular interest is in the Homeric epics, which certainly embrace most of these aspects. I am now retired from teaching Greek at Newcastle University, and previously taught in universities in New Zealand and Australia. I have offered many continuing education courses over the years, and still contribute to the Classical Greek weekend courses at Cambridge University's Institute for Continuing Education.
Siobhan McShane - Post-Beginners' Latin Tutor
I am studying a PhD at Durham University. My topic is the first century Latin poet Ovid, his exile, and reception by modern writers in exile. This year I’ve been a graduate teaching assistant on the Intermediate Latin course for 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates. I have an MA from KCL in Classical Reception and a BA from Durham in Classics and English, and I’ve studied Latin for more than 10 years. Alongside my PhD, I’m working part-time on a placement with New Writing North, researching working-class literature (you might be surprised how often Classics comes up there!). I’ve also spent time teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers and helping children in foster care with access to education.
Leo Kershaw - Intermediate 2 Greek Tutor
I’m a Junior Research Fellow in Greek Mythology at Christ Church College, University of Oxford, and have previously worked as a Language Instructor in Greek and Latin at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Classics and as a Lecturer in Ancient Greek at the University of Warwick. I have been teaching ancient languages at a university level for the past five years, and this will be my second year teaching Intermediate Greek 2 at the JACT Durham Summer School. Outside of ancient languages, I work on Graeco-Roman literature and am interested in the reception of ancient Greek drama, particularly in postcolonial contexts, and my research focuses on adaptations of classical tragedy and comedy in South Africa.
Hedwig Schmalzgruber - Advanced Greek Tutor
I first came to the JACT Summer School in July 2022, and I taught the course Higher Greek for four years, with a focus on Xenophon, Sophocles and Euripides. From 2026, I will be taking over the “Advanced Greek” course. I have worked as a non-tenured assistant professor in Latin and Ancient Greek at the Universities of Wuppertal and Potsdam (Germany) for several years, and I am currently employed in a similar role at the University of Graz (Austria). In my research, I focus on Late Antiquity and early Christian literature, on the ancient fable, on animals in the Graeco-Roman world, and on Vergil and his reception. Since my DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) postdoctoral scholarship at the University of Durham's Department of Classics and Ancient History in 2021, I have strong links with Durham.
Jo Dodd - Higher Latin Tutor
Salvete! I am Joseph Dodd and this will be my second year teaching at the Durham Summer School. Having had family close to the Wall, summer holidays close to which must have been one of my hooks into Classics, I am really looking forward to returning to the north-east. While I now run the Classics Department at Aldro, a prep school in Surrey, I have taught Latin at all levels. Despite being originally interested in Roman history, while an undergraduate I was drawn to the relationship between classics and opera. This led me through my BA dissertation, an MA in the Reception of the Classical World, and finally my PhD, which was based at UCL but was additionally supervised at the Warburg Institute and Yale. After finding an especially rich sixteenth century manuscript in a Venetian library, my thesis was the first edition and translation with commentary of this neo-Latin Oratio de origine et dignitate musices, which explores how musical harmony can (and should) bring about civic harmony. I am now developing this for publication.
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Adam Marshall - Intermediate 1 Latin Tutor
I’ll be teaching Intermediate Latin 1 at the JACT Summer School. I’m currently a postgraduate researcher in Classics at the University of Warwick where my work focuses on critical and theoretical approaches to Latin literature (Martial’s Epigrams, in particular). Much of my research explores how careful attention to the Latin language can deepen and expand our understanding of ancient texts. Working closely with the language often reveals layers of meaning that aren’t always visible when reading translations, and one of the most rewarding parts of studying Latin, in my view, is seeing how the literature, and the world it evokes, gradually becomes richer as our reading develops. This will be my first year as part of the teaching team at the JACT Summer School and I’m very much looking forward to working with such an enthusiastic community of Classicists.
Amélie von Kuhlberg - Beginners' Latin Tutor
I’m currently a Classics teacher at a secondary school near London and have been teaching for nearly ten years, working across both school and university contexts. At JACT Durham, I’m teaching Beginners’ Latin and (given that it’s such a great language!) am really looking forward to introducing it to new students this summer. Although my background is very much rooted in the classroom rather than full-time academia, my research has focussed on Dionysus and themes of death and rebirth in Augustan poetry. I’m especially interested in helping people see how Latin literature brings big human questions to life, and I love finding ways to make the study of the ancient world feel relevant and fun.
Matt Ellard - Intermediate 2 Latin Tutor
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Seb Nichols - Higher Latin Tutor
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Sam Newington - Women: The Reality Behind the Myth Tutor
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Hermione Williams - Beginners' Greek Tutor
I have been connected to the summer school since I was a student and have taught on the summer school for the last three years. I’m an experienced Classics teacher teaching in a central London girls’ school and have now been teaching just shy of 10 years! My interests include tennis, hiking and the arts and I’m really interested in mythology and love the retellings of the myths. I’m usually found reading, listening or watching anything done by Natalie Haynes!
Barney Chesterton - Post-Beginners' Greek Tutor
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Lynette Mitchell - Higher Greek Tutor
I started learning Greek as an undergraduate in Australia. I then moved to the UK and Durham in the early 1990s to do my PhD, had a short time in Oxford at Oriel College, before moving to Exeter University in Devon in 1998, where I stayed until my retirement in 2024. I am primarily a Greek Historian, and have written a number of books and articles on Greek politics. After retirement, I still live in Devon, and still do research, most recently on ancient kingship (and tyranny) in both Greece and the Near East. Other than ancient history, I enjoy spending quality time with my beautiful Samoyed, Florentina (aka Flo).