Professor
Matthew Leigh
Hubbard Fellow in Classics, CUF Lecturer, and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature
Member of Governing Body and Council
Greek and Latin Languages and Literature
Email: matthew.leigh@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Academia.edu: https://oxford.academia.edu/MatthewLeigh
I studied for my BA and DPhil. at Balliol College, Oxford, and as a visiting student at the University of Pisa. Before returning to Oxford in October 1997, I taught for 4 years at the University of Exeter. I lecture regularly in Europe and the United States. In September 2018 I served as Battle Professor of Classics at the University of Texas. From February to June 2020 I served as Visiting Professor of Classics at Princeton University and for September to December 2023 I returned as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. I have published on a wide variety of topics including Roman Epic, Roman Comedy, and Ancient Concepts of Curiosity.
Course Highlights
Classics at St Anne’s is boosted by regular meetings of the College Classics Society, which organises social events, lectures, and a research symposium. We run a thriving Classical Reception Reading Group, which meets one lunchtime every week to discuss post-classical works that engage with the literature and art of the ancient world. We also hold a termly gathering under the title Lockdown Translation Unlocked, in which members of the Classics School share with one another their creative translations of works from and into any language.
You can find St Anne’s Classicists on X and Bluesky.
Recent publications
Juno Trains her Chorus: Statius, Thebaid 12.464-480', Athenaeum 111 (2023), 188-208
The Masons and the Mysteries in 18th Century Drama (Berlin and New York, 2020)
From Polypragmon to Curiosus. Ancient Concepts of Curious and Meddlesome Behaviour (Oxford, 2013)
‘“illa domus, illa mihi sedes” - On the Interpretation of Catullus 68’. In S. P. Oakley and R. L. Hunter eds, Latin Literature and its Transmission. Studies in Honour of Michael Reeve (Cambridge, 2016), 194-224
‘Lucan’s Caesar and Laelius’. In P. Mitsis and I. Ziogas eds., Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2016), 259-272
‘Vergil’s Second Eclogue and the Class Struggle’, Classical Philology 111 (2016), 406-433