JACT Durham Greek & Latin Summer School
Tony Potter - Course Director
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I’ve been attending the JACT Durham Greek and Latin Summer School since 2018. In 2022 I joined the team as a tutor and have taught Beginner’s Latin for the past 2 years. My educational background is in Ancient History, Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology, and I’m currently writing my doctoral thesis on Etruscan funerary practices. For 2025 I’ve moved out of the classroom and have taken a role on the Summer School's Senior Leadership Team as the Course Director. Alongside my colleagues at the JACT Durham Greek and Latin Summer School, I’m committed to delivering the best possible experience for learners and raising the profile of Classics and Classics education in state schools and further education colleges. I’m a dedicated life-long learner with the Open University and always look forward to spending the week in Durham at the Summer School where I get to reconnect with friends and work with all of our amazing students. As Course Director I’m always happy to help, so if you’d like to contact me, please get in touch on – tony.durham.lgss@gmail.com.
Joe Watson - Director of Studies​​
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Hi, I’m Joe. I’m the Director of Studies at the JACT Latin and Greek Summer School and have been teaching various levels of Latin here for seven 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, Unspeakable Nefas: Incest and Bestiality in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, will be coming out soon. 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.
Molly Orme - Pastoral & Safeguarding Director
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Hi, I am Molly Orme and I'm Pastoral & Safeguarding Director for the Summer School. I first attended the Summer School as a student for two years (2018 and 2019) before joining the teaching team. I work in a Senior School in Somerset where I teach Latin, Greek and Classical Civilisation up to A Level. I am also Assistant Housemistress in a girls boarding house.
Davy Benstead-Cross - Course Tutor: The Homeric Hero​​
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​A full-time tutor for 10 years, I have worked in a wide range of environments including schools, foster homes, private tuition centres and summer schools. I specialize in tutoring History, Classical Civilization and Mathematics. At JACT Durham, I taught post-beginner’s Greek between 2018 and 2023. In 2024, I authored and taught a new course on The Homeric Hero, which is unique to our summer school. I trained as a historian at the universities of Durham (BA Ancient History and Archaeology, MA Ancient Historiography) and St Andrews (MLitt Early Modern History). My research interests include the reception of warfare, comparative literature, and maritime history.
Hedwig Schmalzgruber - Course Tutor: Greek
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I first came to the JACT Summer School in July 2022, and I have taught the course "Higher Greek" since then, with a focus on Xenophon, Sophocles and Euripides. 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.
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Shekinah Vera-Cruz - Course Tutor: Latin
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Hello, I'm Shekinah. I'm a final year PhD candidate at the University of Warwick, and I'm teaching ab initio Latin at the Durham JACT Latin and Greek Summer School this year (for the first time!). I've been teaching Roman history at undergraduate level since 2023, with a focus on close readings of primary sources. My doctoral research is an exploration of ritual performance in Roman law, so I work primarily with Latin legal texts and legal language, especially Gaius' Institutiones, Ulpian's Regulae, and the Digest of Justinian. Alongside Roman civil law, my research interests include curse tablets from Roman Britain, the Roman imperial administration, and the social status of slaves and freedmen.
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Leo Kershaw - Course Tutor: Greek
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Hi, I’m Leo. I’m a Language Instructor in Greek and Latin at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Classics, where I teach students from beginner through to advanced. I have been teaching ancient languages at a university level for the past four years, and in 2024 I also joined the University of Warwick as a Sessional Lecturer in Greek Theatre. Outside of teaching languages, I am interested in the reception of ancient Greek drama, particularly in postcolonial contexts, on which I recently completed my PhD at Oxford. I joined the JACT Durham teaching team in 2025 and am looking forward to my first year teaching at the Summer School after attending as a student a decade ago!
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Matthew Barton - Course Tutor: Greek
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Hello, I'm Matthew, a new tutor to the JACT Latin and Greek Summer School, and I will be teaching Beginners' Greek. 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.
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Andrea Giannotti - Course Tutor: Greek
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Hello there, I am Andrea! I am a new Tutor at the 2025 JACT Latin and Greek Summer School and have been teaching various levels of Greek and Latin for other Durham Summer Schools in the past few years. Currently, I am Teaching Fellow in Classics at Durham University, where I also completed my PhD in 2019 and where I teach language modules in Greek and Latin at all levels (Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced, and Higher) as well as non-language modules in Greek theatre (‘Comedy and Tragedy, Laughter and Sorrow’, ‘Interpreting Greek Tragedy Today’) and Ancient Epic (‘Sing me, O Muse: Poetic Inspiration, Initiation, and Heroism’). At Durham, I have also carried out administrative duties, such as L2/L3 Tutor and Dissertations Coordinator. My research centres on Greek Tragedy and Epigraphy—topics on which I publish regularly. My first book, a new Italian commentary to Euripides’ Suppliant Women, was published in 2023 (Milan: Rizzoli) and will be followed by another new Italian commentary to Euripides’ Children of Heracles (Milan: Rizzoli, 2025) and by the first English commentary to Pseudo-Euripides’ Letters (Liverpool: LUP, 2026). I also research and publish on Cognitivism (especially social cognition applied to Greek tragedy) and Digital Humanities (with several digital editions of inscriptions on the journals/platforms Axon and AIO and co-leading the DeFRAG-Tragedy project).
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Siobhan McShane - Course Tutor: Latin
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Hi, I’m Siobhan. I’m a tutor for Beginner’s Latin. Currently, 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.
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Janet Watson - Course Tutor: Greek
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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; above all, the enthusiasm of the students and the hard work they put in makes the teaching part such a pleasure. At last year's summer school I took the Advanced group for the first half, followed by Intermediate 2 for the second half. 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.
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Hermione Williams - Course Tutor: Greek
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Hi, I’m Hermione Williams and I usually teach beginners Greek. I have been connected to the summer school since I was a student and have taught on the summer school for the last two 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!
Jo Dodd - Course Tutor: Latin
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Salvete! I am Joseph Dodd and this will be my first 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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Barney Chesterton - Course Tutor: Greek
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Matthew Ellard - Course Tutor: Latin
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James Bamforth - Course Tutor: Latin
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Justine T. Wolfenden- Course Tutor: Latin
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