Dr Alecto Hardwick

Previously known as Alexandra Hardwick

4 alexandra hardwick summer schools
Hody Lecturer in Ancient Greek, Wadham College
alexandra.hardwick@wadham.ox.ac.uk

Qualifications: BA (Cantab), MSt DPhil (Oxon)

Link to college page: https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-alexandra-hardwick

 

Academic Background

I completed my doctorate at Oxford in 2021, supported by an AHRC scholarship. Before that, I studied for an MSt in Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford (2016-17) and a BA in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge (2013-16). I have since taught at several Oxford colleges, including Trinity and Wadham.

Research Interests

I apply ideas from contemporary social science to ancient Greek texts, considering especially depictions of group decision-making, collective emotion, and affect theory. My research focuses on Greek drama; more broadly, I work on Greek historiography, lyric, and hexameter poetry from Homer to the Imperial period. I am currently researching Lucian's depictions of sex work in Dialogues of the Courtesans and the use of affect theory to model interpersonal emotion in Euripides. My engagement with ancient Greek texts often draws on my own experiences as a queer and trans woman: I love exploring depictions of otherness and strangeness in all their forms.

I regularly collaborate with creators in other fields, most recently with the composer Ro Shapes Tickle on Heart as I, a fragmentary and aleatory choral setting of my translations of Sappho. If you’re interested in collaborating with me on a project, please get in touch – I’d love to hear from you!

Research Keywords

Tragedy; Comedy; Drama; Poetry; Psychology; Embodiment; Affect; Group; Collective; Performance; Gender; Transgender

Teaching

I am willing to supervise any postgraduate students on Greek drama and hexameter poetry, especially on topics relating to gender, politics, psychology and social science, and theories of performance. My teaching covers all undergraduate Greek literature papers. My favourite aspect of teaching at Oxford is helping students develop the ability to interrogate and enjoy rich, complex texts (such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which I teach within the Tragedy paper). I have also taught interdisciplinary seminars on topics including literary canons and religious poetry.

I am deeply committed to outreach and to helping students from underrepresented backgrounds thrive at Oxford. I have been a core Humanities tutor on the Opportunity Oxford undergraduate bridging programme (2020-23), teach at the Wadham Classics Summer School (since 2021), and run outreach sessions in primary and secondary schools. I welcome opportunities to give Classics-related talks in all schools, especially those without a history of studying ancient Greece and Rome. I also give public lectures, most recently the 2025 LGBTQ History Month Lecture on “Queerness and ‘Monsters’ from Antiquity to Today” at Kellogg College.

Publications

Selected Publications:

As sole author
Forthcoming:
Book: Off-Stage Groups in Athenian Drama. Oxford UP.
Book Chapter: Crowd Psychology and the Comic Dêmos’, in L. Huitink & I. Sluiter, edd. Psychology of the Ancient World. For the series Euhormos: Greco-Roman Studies in Anchoring Innovation. Brill (Leiden).

Article: “Iliad Translations in the Undergraduate Classroom” Journal of Classics Teaching 26 (2025) 151-157.
Article: “A Conjecture on Sophocles Electra 278” Mnemosyne 70 (2017) 867-871.

Talks and Public Lectures
“Queerness and ‘Monsters’ from Antiquity to Today” (LGBTQ History Month Lecture 2025, Kellogg College.

Joint Publications
‘Scholars Respond to Misogynist Nostalgia for Roman Masculinity’, Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics (March 2018)

Reviews
Review of A. Shilo, Beyond Death in the Oresteia: Poetics, Ethics, and Politics. BMCR (2023).

Review of M. C. Encinas Reguero & M. Quijada Sagredo, edd., Tragic Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Greek Tragedy. BMCR (2022).