“Education is the key to unlocking our full potential.” – Jimmy Reid I remember wee ten-year-old me unable to fully grasp why my great-uncle Billy was all dressed up one Thursday morning. He and my great-aunt were, after a quick breakfast at my grandparents’, off to Glasgow to attend the funeral of Jimmy Reid. Jimmy READ MORE
Category: Blog posts
UK Class in Classics Launch Event
We held a launch event for the UK Class in Classics Report 2024 on Thursday 14 March, a little over two weeks after the report was released. The event was an initial opportunity to share reflections on the report’s key findings and recommendations, as well as to start discussing next steps. Attendees included university classicists READ MORE
UK Class in Classics Report 2024
The UK Class in Classics Report (2024) is here. It is based on the UK Class in Classics Survey which we ran from late 2022 to early 2023. This had a total of 1,206 respondents and revealed class disparities across student and staff bodies. We have now analysed the data and the results are here READ MORE
Speaking Out About How We Speak
35% of university students feel self-conscious about their accent. 33% of university students are worried their accent could affect their ability to succeed in the future. A whopping 56% of university students from the north of England have had their accent mocked in a social setting.[1]Erez Levon, Devyani Sharma and Christian Ilbury (2022) ‘Speaking up: Accents READ MORE
Pandemic inequalities
by Lilah Grace Canevaro and Mirko Canevaro The CUCD has recently published Pandemic Stories, a report based on a survey that ran from September 2021 to November 2022. The survey collected experiences of scholars of the ancient Mediterranean world (Classics and Ancient History) in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was aimed at classicists and READ MORE
UK Class in Classics Survey
We are delighted to announce the launch on October 25th of the first ever UK Class in Classics Survey, sponsored by the Network for Working-Class Classicists and the Council of University Classics Departments. This survey is designed to gather data on class demographics and experiences in the discipline of Classics in the UK. It is open to anyone READ MORE
We need to talk about money: what the cost-of-living crisis means for working-class classicists
In recent months, news headlines have increasingly focused on the experiences of those affected by the cost-of-living crisis and university students (and, in many cases, staff) are no exception. In July 2022, a survey by the National Union of Students (NUS) found that 11% of students and apprentices have sought support from food banks, with READ MORE
“I Still See the Elitism”. Classical Languages and the Language of Class at Liverpool
by Marco Perale At the University of Liverpool, no prior knowledge of either Greek or Latin is required to study Classics, Classical Studies, or Ancient History. Unlike some other institutions in the UK, we give students the possibility to start from scratch, that is from the alphabet in Greek and from really basic sentences in READ MORE
If Class Were a Protected Characteristic
by Lilah Grace Canevaro, Mirko Canevaro, Henry Stead, Eris Williams-Reed The CUCD Equality and Diversity Report published in 2020 offered a valuable insight into the ‘current state of the discipline’ and has since prompted some productive actions across the UK and beyond. At the outset, the report indicated that its analysis focused on gender and READ MORE
Working-Class Classics: Myths, Stories and Experiences
Lilah Grace Canevaro and Mirko Canevaro, University of Edinburgh ‘Working-Class Classics: A Conversation’ took place on Thursday 22nd April. The event featured 10 speakers and was attended by over 60 people. The presentations were impassioned, the discussion equally so, and the sharing of war stories had a powerful impact. We heard from undergraduates, postgraduates, postdocs and READ MORE