SFU and UBC Organize Colloquium on Responsible Public Scholarship & Ancient Mediterranean History

The SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies is pleased to be sponsoring the upcoming colloquium,“Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement and Ancient Mediterranean History,” organized by Peopling the Past. The event will take place from March 23-25, 2023 in Vancouver, BC, co-hosted by Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia.

The goal of this colloquium is to ask how educators inside and outside the academy can more effectively participate in public discourse about the ancient Mediterranean. The event will bring together academics, museum professionals, and public scholars to deliver presentations on the challenges and best practices for teaching and scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean. Specialists from the humanities and social sciences, including senior scholars, early career researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and non-academic professionals, will collaborate in discussions about cultural heritage, pedagogy, and public history for academic and non-academic audiences.

The colloquium will include traditional research presentations, short graduate-student talks, interviews with public programmers, and a live-podcast taping, during which there will be a discussion regarding questions related to responsible knowledge creation, communication, and engagement across various learning environments, from the classroom to the museum to social media. Specifically, the aim is to address how to engage in responsible public scholarship that is more inclusive of past diversity and modern audiences. Featured work included will be that of several public scholars who are creating innovative and compassionate answers to this question.

This conference has been generously funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies and the Department of Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University, the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and Green College at the University of British Columbia, Acadia University, the University of Winnipeg, and the Vancouver Chapter of the American Research Centre in Egypt.