Philip has a new article in Ancient Near East Today, talking about his research on writing in Bronze Age Ugarit. You can read the article here:
The Social Context of Writing in Ancient Ugarit
And it that leaves you wanting more, don’t forget that you can also access Philip’s whole monograph on the subject for free HERE!
I am ever so excited to announce that I have been awarded a new Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council, to pursue a new five-year project called VIEWS: Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems! You can read an announcement about it here:
Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS) awarded ERC grant
VIEWS will start up in October, and will investigate the visual properties of pre-modern writing systems (often overlooked in favour of their linguistic properties) as well as their context in wider visual landscapes and visual culture. It will involve some Linear A and B, some cuneiform, some Phoenician, some Egyptian hieroglyphs and even some Mayan – with a whole lot more besides as I’m really keen to get some global perspectives on writing by looking towards other areas such as east Asia, Africa and the Pacific. I’m also particularly interested in pursuing some new research ideas related to writing system vitality and loss, with potential to help us think about how we can revitalise endangered writing systems in the modern day.
I am ever so excited and humbled to have been initiated into the Lego Classicists family, and immortalised as a Lego figure. It’s a huge honour, and just the most amazing career accolade! I even have a little tile with the CREWS logo, and have been designed specially to include one of my self-made necklaces.
On 22nd of June 2016, one day before the Brexit referendum, I had the interview for my studentship at the CREWS Project. I still don’t know where I got the courage to apply for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Probably from my mum, who told me: “Imagine how many people won’t even apply just because they feel as intimidated as you are right now.” She was right, and I had nothing to lose.
I remember asking my interviewers how a supposed Brexit would change the situation of the project and mine if I were the chosen candidate, as I am a Spanish national and CREWS is fully funded by the European Research Council. They told me not to worry about it, that most probably it wouldn’t happen. While Britain was voting, I got the good news: I was successful in the competition and was invited to do my PhD as part of this project. The bad news came the following morning: the UK had voted to leave the EU. But that would take quite a long time to materialise, in fact, as much as my thesis.
So there I was, in September 2016, arriving for the first time in Cambridge. The months and years to come were happy ones. Although I missed my family, my people, my Madrid, I was feeling truly independent in my personal and professional life. I owned my work and my time, which wasn’t easy at first, but very rewarding once I managed to visualise clearly what I wanted my thesis to look like and how much time I had to finish it.
Pippa has written a post for the Magdalene College website about writing in the ancient world, thinking about the distinctiveness and vitality of writing systems.
You can read the article HERE.
We are delighted to announce the new CREWS Visiting Fellows, who will be coming to spend some time with us here in Cambridge next year. When we launched the visiting fellowship scheme last year, we aimed to host scholars working on similar research themes, giving them a chance to spend time with access to our resources and us a chance to interact and exchange ideas with them as members of the CREWS team. The first results have been extremely stimulating and productive. This year’s visits from Willemijn Waal, Giorgos Bourogiannis and Cassandra Donnelly have been wonderfully successful, not to mention greatly enjoyable, and I am very much looking forward to welcoming new friends and colleagues to spend time with us next year.
There were three main winners of our Visiting Fellowship competition, plus two who will spend shorter periods with us, all as CREWS Visiting Fellows. They are working on all sorts of wonderful things, including imaging techniques that help us to understand inscribed objects better, investigating distinctive traits in and social contexts of the epigraphic habits of different areas, new ways of trying to understand linguistic features underlying undeciphered scripts and the history of alphabetical ordering of information. Read more below! Continue reading “New Visiting Fellows at CREWS”
A couple of months ago my new book, Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus, was published with Cambridge University Press. This was a long-term project, beginning with a series of lectures given at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2014 and culminating in a work that underpins the research undertaken at CREWS. In fact, it was in writing this book that the whole idea for the CREWS project began…
Please note that you can now read the first chapter for free with open access HERE.
Continue reading “Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus – Pippa’s new book”
We’ve now released the full programme for our conference ‘Exploring the Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Systems’, which takes place in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge on the 14th-16th March 2019. It can be viewed and downloaded on the Conference page.
We are also now opening registration. The conference is free but if you’d like to attend it is necessary to register, as places are limited. To do so, please email Dr Philip Boyes at pjb70@cam.ac.uk.
We look forward to March and what is shaping up to be a fascinating set of talks!
Over the summer we conducted a competition for the first round of our Visiting Fellowship Scheme, to enable a scholar working on topics relevant to the CREWS project to come and spend some time with us in Cambridge. We had a very strong field of applicants, and were very pleased to be able to make two awards this year, to our top two candidates: Cassandra Donnelly and Willemijn Waal. You can read more about them, and their research projects, below. Continue reading “Announcing the new CREWS Visiting Fellows!”
At the CREWS project we are conducting new research on ancient writing systems, but the research itself is only one aspect of what we do. There’s no point in finding things out if you don’t communicate them after all. And we love passing on our enthusiasm for ancient writing! That is why we are trying to develop our outreach activities and teaching materials (see more below), and we also report on these aspects to our funding body, the European Research Council.
We want to hear from YOU. Have you used CREWS blog posts in a teaching capacity (e.g. in school or university or just with the kids at home)? Have you used our write-your-name sheets? Have you encountered us at an outreach event? Do you have any requests or resommendations for us?
If the answer to any of these is yes, please consider getting in touch to tell us. You can leave a comment on this post or use our contact form or email. Continue reading “Reaching out with ancient writing”
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