I was immensely honoured to be named the recipient of the Impact and Outreach Award 2025 by OIKOS, the Dutch consortium of University Classics Departments.

In their laudatio, the OIKOS Committee mentioned the following reasons:

‘The winner of this year’s OIKOS Impact and Outreach Award is described as a builder
of bridges between scholarship and society, between Antiquity and the present,
between education and research. There are few researchers who manage to bring the Classics to a broad and new audience with such dedication, creativity and impact as this candidate, a pioneer in
making Antiquity accessible to groups traditionally less likely to encounter it.’ (The full laudatio can be read here.)

I was asked to give an acceptance speech and decided to use the time given to me to speak about ‘The vulnerability of Public Engagement’. Here is a short excerpt:

‘Of course none of us want children like Laure – or indeed anyone else – not to have access to Classics. We’re not responsible for educational structures that were set up in the past, nor for the complicated role classics has played in the centuries of European history. Yet while we’re not to blame for the past, we are responsible for what happens next. If we continue considering Classics as a neutral space and continue with business as usual, we’re essentially giving up, and our subject area is bound to die a slow death due to external and internal pressures, and decreasing student numbers. However, since Classics is not an ideologically neutral space, it also bears the potential to enact positive social change, as I’ve been trying to do with my public engagement work.’

The entire speech may be read here.

Photo of me looking absolutely shattered after a nervewracking experience: