As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations, we are writing a series of blog posts in which members tell us about their experiences with the WCC UK. Our second interviewee is Prof. Amy Russell.
Amy Russell is an Associate Professor of History and Classics at Brown. She is a Roman political and cultural historian, with a particular interest in architecture, urbanism, and space. She is a founding member and former chair of the WCC UK.
She discusses her involvement with the WCC with Katherine McDonald, current co-chair of the WCC.
KM: Tell me a bit more about how you first got involved with the WCC.
AR: You know I can’t remember exactly how I first heard about it. I’d relatively recently come back from America when this all started and I’d been a member of the WCC there. And so when I got an email saying, hey, there’s some people talking about this, I was very excited to join in. And I was one of the first people on the steering committee.
KM: So that was all about ten years ago now. In that last decade, were there any particular WCC events or initiatives that stand out to you and have been important to you?
AR: I think you’ll hear a lot of people talking about community, and I think that’s really true. Going to the in-person events was really important to me, and I’m sure online events important during the pandemic as well. But just the initial buzz around the first few in-person events, and realising, look, this is a community and we do have a real critical mass of people who are interested. And we had people willing to put in time and energy into making it all happen, and having pedagogy events, and they were really exciting people thinking about exciting things.
But I’m also very proud of the work we did behind the scenes. For example, we put in a proposal to be an official nominating body for the REF. I’m sure that there is a very strong case to be made that we should not be cooperating with the REF, but in the end it seemed to me that it’s probably better that we have a voice. So even though at the time we still felt we were very scrappy and new, we put in that application and we were successful, and then when it came time for the nominations I feel like we really did get to have a say. The Steering Committee behind the scenes were reading applications and were able to make a case for people that we thought would be good panellists, and indeed good chairs. And I am pretty proud of what we achieved. And again, with feminist activism, there’s this constant tension between working with the institutions and burning the institutions down, but sometimes working with the institutions can be a powerful tool.
KM: It’s really interesting to talk about the backstage side of it, because people often talk about an ‘old boys network’ as something that women and other marginalised people in Classics are really missing out on, and I think the opportunity to build an alternative version of that is very powerful.
AR: And one that is truly open to everyone. We had always conceptualised ourselves as being open to everyone and having a definition of ‘woman’ that was very inclusive, but also being open to people who don’t identify as women. And that was a big part of our activism from very early on. It was very surprising that there wasn’t some kind of women’s organisation already, but at the same time this was the period when organisations were springing up in different disciplines for trans people as well. Classics didn’t have any of that, at least on an official, institutional footing, and so we immediately were doing some of that work, which I see as all connected. And then, what happened at the San Diego SCS, and we did a lot of coordination of the different Classics organisations in the UK to issue a statement in reaction to that.
And another thing we were doing behind the scenes, and I’m not sure if I would do it the same way now, was contacting people who were putting together ‘manels’ and asking – would you consider making changes to your programme. I don’t know if that was the most efficacious way, but we were thinking it all through. I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations about that, then and since. And I think the guidance that we put out about manels and about hiring plans and things like that, those were good, useful documents. I hope that people have read them.
KM: So, this is all about the wider system, but is there anything you feel the WCC has really added to your life as a woman in Classics?
AR: It definitely comes back to community. These people are still people I feel very close to and work with, and can share frustrations with sometimes. When I was a graduate student, I was still only beginning to realise how bad things were. We talk lot about feminisation of the humanities, but in some places and some universities, Classics still is one of the last to go. I remember when I was doing my Master’s at Oxford, and I decided to sit in on the MSt in women’s studies, and I walked into the lecture room and I realised for the first time in my life I’d been in a room that was majority women at a lecture. Because I’d come up in this system that I’d seen as completely normal, and I’d never connected my own activism outside my work with what was going on in my own field.
K: Final question then: What would you say to anyone who is thinking of joining the WCC for the first time?
A: Well, I’d say, do it. Take advantage of this organisation that allows you to find community with people working at different kinds of institutions, with different kinds of life experiences. For me certainly it’s been incredibly helpful for me to think about, with lots of trial and error, the relationship between my own professional identity and my own activism. Certainly for anyone who is having thoughts about that, this is a great place to go.
Our call for nominations to join the Steering Committee of the Women’s Classical Committee UK is now open.
The Steering Committee runs the WCC UK, including organizing events, workshops, and future development of the WCC UK. Committee members serve for four years, with the option to renew for a further four-year term. The Steering Committee wishes to encourage a diverse organization comprised of representatives from any background, location, or career level.
If you’d like to shape our agenda, or if you have a perspective that ought to be heard, please do put your name forward. You are also welcome to nominate someone else.
People of any gender expression or identity who support the WCC UK’s aims are welcome to become members and to put themselves forward for office; our aims can be found by clicking here.
Nominees must be members of the WCC UK – but you can become a member when you’re elected, if you’re not a member already.
If you’re interested, you should submit your name (or somebody else’s) to Katherine McDonald, WCC Co-Chair, by Monday 9th March 2026. Her e-mail address is katherine.mcdonald@durham.ac.uk.
Next steps
Each nominee will be asked to send in a short statement (around 150 words) detailing why they would like to join the committee.
These statements will be made available on the WCC UK website for members to review prior to voting. If you’re nominated by somebody else, the Co-Chair will contact you for permission to place your candidacy on the ticket.
Voting will open on Monday 16th March and run until Monday 20th April 2026. The elected members will be announced at the AGM on Wednesday 22nd April 2026.
If you have any questions about the Steering Committee or the process of elections, please e-mail us at womensclassicalcommittee@gmail.com.
Liaison Officers
In addition to the Steering Committee elections, we also have a number of liaison officers for different groups. These positions are normally held for a renewable two-year term. Please get in touch with Katherine McDonald (katherine.mcdonald@durham.ac.uk) if you would be interested or if you have any questions about these positions.
As part of the Women’s Classical Committee’s tenth anniversary celebrations, we invite you to join us for a lively round table discussion and Q&A on the theme of ‘Celebrating Women in Classics’ on 22nd April 2026 at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London. Our panellists are experts across a range of disciplines whose work offers new and different ways of celebrating the women of the ancient world, as well as the women who have studied the ancient world.
Topics will include: the impact of modern retellings of Classical myth on the study of Classical Civilization in schools (Katharine Russell), women on the Grand Tour (Dr Hardeep Dhindsa) and the use of the women of ancient myth in modern theatre on the themes of peace and war (Dr Alice König).After presentations by the speakers and a panel discussion, the audience will be welcome to ask questions and join the conversion.
This event will begin with a drinks reception from 5pm; the panel discussion will begin at 6pm.
All are welcome to this free, celebratory event. The event is in-person only, but a recording will be made available afterwards.
The evening event will be preceded by the WCC’s AGM, from 2-4pm. This is for members only, but all are welcome to join (see details below).
Katharine Piu San Russell is a PhD student at Durham University. Her research looks at how the recent wave of myth-based fiction by female authors is changing the classical pedagogy landscape. By interviewing students and teachers across England, she has found that this literary trend has been generating a sense of belonging for a new community of young women classicists. Her research was inspired by five years spent as the Head of Classics at a multi-academy trust in the East of England.
Dr Hardeep Dhindsa (he/him) is the Curator of Victorian Art and the Global at Birmingham Museums Trust, specialising in Greco-Roman art and its receptions. He is interested in the relationship between Whiteness and classical antiquity across the British Empire, particularly during the long eighteenth century. Hardeep has collaborated with several cultural institutions, including The British Museum, The National Trust, and The National Gallery to develop public programmes addressing the difficult histories of empire.
Prof. Alice König is a Professor of Classics at the University of St Andrews. Her current research projects, ‘Visualising War and Peace: interplay between conflict narratives in ancient and modern cultures’ and Visualising Peace, both explore the ways in which interplay between conflict narratives in different media has helped to canonise ideas about war and peace across time and space. Since 2019 she has worked with the professional theatre company NMT Automatics, including on the development of their 2022 play, ‘Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us’, more recently on a new play about peace and post-conflict recovery, provisionally titled ‘Rena’. In 2025, Alice founded the Ancient Peace Studies Network.
Supporting the WCC UK
This event is free to attend, but if you would like to support the Women’s Classical Committee UK’s work, make a donation via Paypal or join the WCC as a member.
Members of the WCC UK are eligible to join our mentoring programmes and apply for our Small Grants funding, as well as always having free access to all our events. Membership fees are £20 per calendar year, or £5 for students and unemployed, underemployed, or retired members. For more information and to join please visit our website.
Financial support for attendees
Thanks to generous funding from the Classical Association and the Council of University Classics Department’s EDI Committee, we are able to offer 7 bursaries of £100 each to enable graduate students and unemployed or underemployed attendees to participate in this event. For more information and to apply, please click here for the application form.
Members of the WCC UK can alternatively apply to our Small Grants scheme for up to £150 towards their costs in attending the AGM and/or the evening event.
Funding
We are grateful to the CUCD, the Classical Association and the John Coffin Trust Fund for their generous support for this event.
As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations, we are writing a series of blog posts in which members tell us about their experiences with the WCC UK. Our first interviewee is Dr Irene Salvo.
Irene Salvo is a Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at the University of Verona. She has been a LGBT+ activist since many years, promoting the visibility of queer identities in the field of Classics and Ancient History as well as harnessing the power of Greek and Latin sources to fight homo-transphobia through education today.
She discusses her involvement with the WCC with Katherine McDonald, current co-chair of the WCC.
KM: How did you first get involved with the WCC?
IS: Basically, I have been involved with the WCC since the very beginning. It was 2015 in London, and I participated in the sandpit on ‘Classics and Feminism’ organised by various people at the University of London. I remember Effi Spentzou was one of them. It was a way of gathering people interested in feminism in Classics and talking freely about research ideas and teaching plans. And at that meeting, if I remember correctly, Liz Gloyn raised her hand and said, ‘Why don’t we have a WCC like in the US here in the UK?’ And her idea proved very successful, because from that point on the wheels were in motion, and so the WCC UK came to life. I was very much involved in the initial discussions about the format; I remember our discussions about the name and what we should call ourselves.
At the time, I was a postdoc at Royal Holloway. And it was very liberating to participate to share this energy. Because I had been feeling that something was missing in UK academia, and in general in Europe. Because certainly there was the EuGeSta network (European Gender Studies in Antiquity), but that was very much research-based; these days they also have projects on gender and Classical scholarship that aims to give visibility to the work of women in Classics. But the way in which the WCC differentiated itself from existing networks – such as EuGeSta and Arachne (Nordic Network for Women’s History and Gender Studies in Antiquity) – was firstly the geography, because it was UK-based, and secondly its comprehensive approach, which included research, teaching and especially activism. And this was very inspiring to me and reflected what I wanted to do as an academic: not just being a solitary researcher but really becoming a rounded intellectual who was engaging with what was happening in society.
KM: In the last ten years, have there been any particular initiatives that have been really important to you, or any events that have been really inspiring?
IS: Certainly the initiatives for early career scholars, and also the initiatives that I organised myself as LGBT+ liaison officer from 2015-2021. There was an important workshop which took place in February 2018 at the University of Reading. It was co-organised with Katherine Harloe and Talitha Keary, and it was about teaching, research and activism in LGBT+ Classics. And so it was a great platform to showcase how we could make the queer component of the Classical curriculum more visible, not just in teaching but also in research and in public engagement.
But I also found it very important to be able to sponsor WCC panels at the CA. I co-organised a panel for the CA [Swansea, 2020] together with Maria Gerolemou on “Storying Gendered Emotions in Classical Antiquity”. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of COVID, and so it was cancelled at the time, but the good thing was that we continued working on it and it came out as a journal issue for the Journal of Cognitive Historiography [in 2024]. So I mention this as a way of showing how the WCC can be a promoter of research and research outputs.
KM: Yes, and bringing people together who can collaborate on that research as well.
IS: Yes – and although anyone of any gender was welcome to contribute to that panel, in the end it was an all-female line-up. And I think that it is still important to care about women being on panels. I always found it very stimulating the discussions that we had about spotting all-male panels which, astonishingly, are still commonly happening. Especially in the UK, the WCC has been a sort of guardian, keeping an eye on this kind of practice, and naming and shaming those scholars who are still actively excluding women from research activities.
KM: And providing alternative opportunities as well, that’s been so important. The next question – and you’ve partially answered this already – is, what do you feel the WCC has added to your life and your experience of being a woman in Classics?
IS: The WCC helped me to understand that we have a purpose, not just in academia, but in society, to bring about positive change. I think that this is one of the lessons I’ve learned in the WCC, that thanks to community and solidarity among like-minded people, we can be agents of change. And it was tangible change, you could really see that the discussions that we had online, and in meetings, we were really bringing about change in the way that Classics as a discipline was performed in UK academia.
KM: I completely agree. So, what would you say to someone considering joining the WCC for the first time, particularly students and ECRs?
IS: I think that PhD students and ECRs getting involved can find mentors, and inspiring role models. First of all, they can find fresh ways of being a Classicist. Classics is a very traditional discipline, but the WCC has a plethora of women who have reached good positions, in great jobs, by doing Classics in very original and innovative ways. And also many senior members of the WCC are not just researchers but also very engaged and committed educators. They are putting forward various kinds of engagement projects, and are very committed to engaging with society at large, so I think that they can offer role models about how to be a better Classicist.
And secondly the WCC offers a network, a support network, a community that can really pick you up when you are feeling low. And it’s a non-judgemental space. I think this is the greatest thing in the WCC UK. You can come as you are, with your fragilities, with your doubts, and you will always find a sense of community that embraces you and supports you and leads you to a better phase of your life. So, I think these two things – finding role models and finding a community – are two of the biggest merits of the WCC UK.
The Women’s Classical Committee UK is organising an online event aimed at mid-career scholars, to be held on Wednesday 11th February 2026 on Zoom between 10am and 1pm. We are delighted that Prof. Josephine Quinn, University of Cambridge, will be our keynote speaker.
The Women’s Classical Committee UK run a mid-career event annually to help colleagues discuss the issues and challenges that face academics, particularly women, at mid-career. Topics to be discussed may include decisions about whether and when to move institutions, questions around disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity and collaboration in research, expectations about international mobility and balancing this with family/caring duties, managing institutional expectations (which may be gendered) around types and levels of administrative service, taking on leadership positions, ways of supporting precarious colleagues, and strategies to tackle unconscious bias in the workplace. Those who register their intent to attend will be invited to fill in an online questionnaire, the results of which will inform the precise choice of topics for discussion sessions. We envisage that the day’s discussions will help to set priorities for resource development and future campaigns by the Women’s Classical Committee UK.
The WCC UK recognises that the term ‘mid-career’ is open to a range of interpretations, but also that different challenges face women in classics in different situations and career stages. This event is aimed primarily at women who self-define as having reached mid-career; markers of this may include being eight or more years after the award of their PhD, holding an open-ended contract, and having an established publication profile. If the event is oversubscribed then we will give priority to women in this situation, but we welcome applications to register from anyone of any gender who feels they would benefit from attending.
Registration Options
The event is capped at 15 attendees; we will be prioritising WCC UK members and non-members based in the UK should this event be oversubscribed. Free registration is available to all via TicketSource: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/womens-classical-committee-uk. Donations in support of the WCC UK and its activities are welcome but not required.
Child-friendly policy
The Women’s Classical Committee is committed to making our events as inclusive as possible, and recognises that the financial and practical challenges of childcare often impede people from participating in workshops and conferences. We welcome the virtual attendance of children at this event.
Following a unanimous vote at the 2025 AGM, the Women’s Classical Committee UK wishes to reiterate its unwavering support for trans and non-binary people. We are deeply concerned at the harmful implications of the Supreme Court Ruling of 16 April 2025, the subsequent EHRC guidance, and the unfolding implementation of this guidance across educational and government institutions during the past six months.
Since its inception in 2015, the WCC has been a trans-inclusive organisation, which welcomes people of all genders as members and participants in our events and initiatives. Two of our key stated aims as an organisation are:
to support those who identify as women, non-binary people, and people of other marginalised genders in classics;
and to raise the profile of the study of women, non-binary people, and people of other marginalised genders in antiquity and classical reception.
By ‘women’ we include, and have always included, all those who self-define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women.
We reject the reduction of womanhood to a narrow definition of biology, and find this policing of gender identity and sexuality antithetical to our aims, both in our scholarship and in our activism.
We are shocked and saddened that trans and non-binary people in our field are facing ever more hostility and difficulty in going about their daily lives. We find the current direction of travel in our national institutions unacceptable, and we recognise the ever-growing barriers that many of our colleagues face as a result of living in a country which is increasingly hostile to their gender identity and expression.
We wish to restate our conviction that people of any gender expression or identity who support our aims are welcome to attend events, become members and to put themselves forward for office. We prioritise holding our events in spaces that are inclusive and do not police public spaces such as toilets and changing rooms.
We also encourage cis women to sign the ‘Not in Our Name’ petition, supported by the Good Law Project, which rejects the premise that trans women are a threat and calls on the women of the UK to stand together against discrimination (https://notinourname.org.uk).
As ever, we will continue to raise up the voices of our members, and all women, non-binary people and people of other marginalised genders in classics.
Signed,
WCC Steering Committee 2025
We thank Cheryl Morgan for her advice and guidance on this statement. “Nothing about us, without us.”
This year there were over twenty requests for mentoring when the WCC UK offered one-off mentoring chats to coincide with the Classical Association Annual Conference. With the kind assistance of committee members and willingness on the part of mentors to take on two mentees, we managed to meet the demand with a variety of in-person and online appointments over that conference weekend. Mentees were roughly matched to mentors where possible in their subject interests.
Topics on which advice was requested by several mentees, other than discussions on dealing with specific forms of data, included: navigating male-dominated faculties; opportunities for those with interdisciplinary backgrounds and non-Classics-but-related majors; networking; active engagement with the academic community; perspectives on the UK academic landscape; how to choose research topics or supervisors; strategic preparation for post-PhD life.
The WCC UK offers to members both short-term mentoring at/alongside the Classical Association conference every year, and longer-term (one year) peer-mentoring in the form of one-year triads. These are set up each autumn and are expected to adhere to the WCC mentoring code of conduct.
Our call for nominations to join the Steering Committee of the Women’s Classical Committee UK is now open.
The Steering Committee runs the WCC UK, including organizing events, workshops, and future development of the WCC UK. Committee members serve for four years, with the option to renew for a further four-year term. The Steering Committee wishes to encourage a diverse organization comprised of representatives from any background, location, or career level.
If you’d like to shape our agenda, or if you have a perspective that ought to be heard, please do put your name forward. You are also welcome to nominate someone else.
People of any gender expression or identity who support the WCC UK’s aims are welcome to become members and to put themselves forward for office; our aims can be found at https://wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk.
Nominees must be members of the WCC UK – but you can become a member when you’re elected, if you’re not a member already.
If you’re interested, you should submit your name (or somebody else’s) to Laura Donati, WCC Co-Chair, by Thursday April 10th 2025. Her e-mail address is ldonati@liverpool.ac.uk.
Next steps
Each nominee will be asked to send in a short statement (around 150 words) detailing why they would like to join the committee.
These statements will be made available on the WCC UK website for members to review prior to voting. If you’re nominated by somebody else, the Co-Chair will contact you for permission to place your candidacy on the ticket.
Voting will open on Monday 14th April and run until Thursday 1st May 2025. The elected members will be announced at the AGM on Friday 2nd May 2025.
If you have any questions about the Steering Committee or the process of elections, please e-mail us at womensclassicalcommittee@gmail.com.
Since 2022, the WCC UK has run its Small Grants Scheme for members. The Scheme grew out of our Emergency Grants scheme, established by our founding Treasurer Carol Atack to support colleagues in need during the COVID-19 crisis. After we came out of lockdown, many members of the Classics community were still in financial need, and funding for postgraduate and early career students in particular became increasingly difficult to find in the current financial landscape of Higher Education. So we founded the Small Grants Scheme, to continue putting our modest funds to good use.
The Scheme pays out grants of up to £150 to support members’ academic activities, including the costs of attending academic events (transport, accommodation, caring costs etc), putting on events (room hire, fees etc), or conducting research (travel to sites, book purchases, copying costs etc). The Scheme runs a simple application process, turns applications around quickly and does not require submission of receipts or reports, to keep the funding as accessible as possible. For the past two years we’ve paid out over £1000 a year to our members, often to postgraduate and early career colleagues, which has allowed them to continue to participate in research and the Classics community with less financial pressure.
We receive no regular funding apart from membership fees, which also cover our in-person events and other expenses. We want to continue to be able to offer small grants to our members for years to come. For that reason, we’re asking for donations from our community to build up a fund for the Scheme. You can use the link below to make a one-off donation or set up a regular gift, using PayPal or a credit or debit card. All donations will go directly towards supporting the Small Grants Scheme – that is, they will go right back into the Classics community.
If you have any questions about your donation or the Small Grants Scheme, please email the WCC UK Treasurer, Christine Plastow, at christine.plastow [at] open.ac.uk.
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