Dr Chella Ward

Professional biography

My research has two main (interconnected) themes. The first is around ideas about bodies in ancient texts that find their way into the modern world. I am especially interested in the ways that biases against certain bodies (and modes of embodiment) in the modern world are inspired by (or said to be inspired by) ancient texts. I have written in particular on the way that ancient literature shapes contemporary ableisms, including in my book, which you can read about in this blog post. A longstanding interest in classical reception informs this work, and I am currently writing a short book for Oxford University Press, Classical Reception: A Very Short Introduction on these approaches. Disability studies has had a huge influence on how I understand classical reception - you can read an open access article I wrote on this with my frequent collaborator Dr Hannah Silverblank here. I am also interested in shifting classical reception away from its reliance on a logic of inheritance and on the idea of the West, and my work is often invested in finding non-linear, non-hegemonic and non-hierarchical ways of figuring classical reception (most commonly via approaches rooted in poststructuralism and decoloniality). I am a Research Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama and recently shone a spotlight on some of these interests in classical reception as part of my Expert in Residence role at the Classical Association.

The second theme of my research is focussed at the intersection of Critical Ancient World Studies and Critical Muslim Studies, and attempts to find ways to imagine the ancient world beyond Eurocentrism and coloniality. I am the co-editor of the open access volume Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics, and you can hear an introduction to this work in this podcast episode. I am especially interested in exploring (and countering) the historiographical islamophobia that results from classicism, and especially from positioning the coming of Islam as the ending of the ancient world (you can listen to a paper I gave on this work at a recent conference here). I am currently working on a book (provisionally entitled 'Classicism: Western Conceptions of the Occident') which responds to Edward Said's 1978 Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient and uses decolonial approaches to read the politics of classicism. I am one of the co-hosts of Radio ReOrient, a podcast about decoloniality and the Islamicate, contribute regularly to the ReOrientations blog on topics related to Critical Ancient World Studies, and sit on the Executive Committee of the Iqbal Centre for Critical Muslim Studies.

In the past I have taught many different aspects of Greek and Latin literature - especially Greek tragedy - and classical reception. I also co-devised the University of Oxford's first course on Decolonisation across all subjects while I was working at Worcester College, with my colleague Rea Duxbury.

At the Open University I am part of the module teams on A276: Classical Latin and on the production of the MA in Classical Studies. I have also produced an open access HeadStart course on Ovid which will shortly be freely available via OpenLearn.

Writing for and speaking to the public is one of my favourite parts of my job. I write frequently for non-specialist audiences, including in the Guardian and in the Times Literary Supplement, and I also write for children. I am the author of A Journey Through Greek Myths (2019) and two books that help children to imagine global antiquity: Gods of the Ancient World (2022) and Beasts of the Ancient World (2023). I tweet at @LuxMea and also use TikTok to communicate about the ancient world (@luxmeatok).