About our staff

Director of Faculty

I first thought Classics was fun at the age of 9, when I saw a repeat of I Claudius on TV; my enthusiasm was soon reinforced by a Penguin translation of Livy in my school library. History as literature and history from literature are still what interest me most, and most of what I publish combines elements of both literary criticism and political history. I read Classics at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, from 1993 to 1996, winning the Chancellor’s Medal for Proficiency in Classical Learning and other University and College prizes. At Magdalen College, Oxford, I took an MPhil in Ancient History in 1998 and a Doctorate in 2002. After holding Research Fellowships at Peterhouse, Cambridge (2000-2004) and Manchester (2004-2005), I joined Edinburgh's Department of Classics as Lecturer in Latin Literature in 2005. I was appointed Senior Lecturer in 2011, Reader in 2014, and Professor in 2016, and served from 2016 to 2019 as Head of the Department of Classics. I have also been a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina (2010-2011), a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (2014), a Humboldt Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (2015-2016), and a visiting Fellow at Karl Eberhards Universität, Tübingen (2020-2021).

At one of the gates of Nicaea

Bright, committed students make it a joy to teach Latin language and literature at Edinburgh. Many of our students have had the good fortune to be taught Latin at school; the four-year course means that those new to the language have time to catch up. By the end of their fourth year, our students can come up with remarkably original and scholarly work. At Honours, I enjoy teaching both central canonical texts like Vergil, Tacitus, and Juvenal, and brilliant but less discovered authors like Ammianus and Rutilius Namatianus. Occasionally, there’s time for me to teach late Roman history.

I enjoy supervising doctoral students on literature of the high and late Roman empire (both verse and prose, including commentaries and text critical studies), and on Roman political history of the same period, and am pleased to hear from those considering an application. As well as the students listed on the Postgraduate supervision tab below, I have served as external supervisor of PhDs on Sidonius (San Marino, Bari) and Suetonius (St Andrews), and am currently external supervisor of a PhD on Claudian (Open University). I have also on several occasions acted as host to postdoctoral scholars, and would be glad to support further applications. As a former Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow, I am eligible and would be pleased to host scholars from Germany for the Feodor Lynen fellowship.

• Secretary of the Edinburgh and South East Centre, Classical Association of Scotland (2006-2014)
• Fellow, National Humanities Center (2010-2011)
• British Academy Mid-Career Fellow (2013-2014)
• ACLS Collaborative Fellowship (2014-2015)
• Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (2014)
• Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (2015-2016)
• President of the Edinburgh and South East Centre, Classical Association of Scotland (2015-2021)
• DFG Fellow, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (2020-2021)
• Visiting Professor, University of Pisa (2021)
• Joint Editor of the series Edinburgh Studies in Later Latin Literature (2019-); member of various other editorial boards / scientific committees / advisory committees

• ausonius.blogspot.com
• edinburgh.academia.edu/GavinKelly
• Research in a nutshell

Summary of research interests

• Europe
• Mediterranean
• Near East

• Language & Literature

• Antiquity
• Medieval

My interests embrace both the literature and the history of the Roman empire, above all the fourth and early fifth centuries – a time of rapid political, social, and religious change, and also one of the most significant periods in Latin literary history. Most of my work melds textual and historical approaches: as both Latinist and historian I prefer secular or pagan texts and topics to ecclesiastical ones. My doctorate and much of earlier work centred on Ammianus Marcellinus, the greatest historian of Late Antiquity. This project was published in a number of articles in journals and collections (including ‘Ammianus and the great tsunami’, which appeared with ominous timing in November 2004), and Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian was published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.

I have collaborated with my colleague Lucy Grig on Rome and Constantinople in late antiquity: Two Romes, a collection of essays resulting from conferences held in Lampeter and Edinburgh, was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in 2012. New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris, co-edited with Joop van Waarden, was published by Peeters of Leuven in 2013; I also organise jointly with Van Waarden an international collaborative project, which has been funded by a Leverhulme International Network grant as well as by a British Academy/ Leverhulme Small Research Grant, to provide commentaries on the whole of Sidonius’ oeuvre. This also led to The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (2020), again co-edited with Van Waarden. Among articles recently published are studies of Latin poets including Martial and Sidonius, of the speeches and letters of Symmachus, of the political history of the 370s AD, and of Edward Gibbon's attitude to late antique literature. WIth my colleague Aaron Pelttari, I am editing a Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature and a Cambridge Dictionary of Later Latin Literature.

Watch a short video of me speaking about my current project of editing Ammianus - Media Hopper

A view of the Roman forum from the Capitoline hill.

For my main individual project at the moment, I have returned to Ammianus Marcellinus and his Res Gestae, in the form of (1) a complete new translation for The Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus, edited by Michael Kulikowski, (2) a new critical edition, contracted to appear in the Oxford Classical Texts, and (3) an accompanying book on the text and language of the Res Gestae, also contracted to Oxford University Press.

Rutilius’ Return [In 2010-11 I held a fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina to work on the fifth-century poet Rutilius Namatianus]

Studies in the Text and Language of Ammianus Marcellinus [supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship 2013-2014, and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship 2015-2016]

The Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus [Work on the translation supported by an ACLS Collaborative Fellowship, held jointly with Michael Kulikowski, Penn State, 2014-15]

Prolegomena to the study of Sidonius Apollinaris (in collaboration with Joop van Waarden, Amsterdam) [conference and publication of The Edinburgh Companion to SIdonius Apollinaris (2020) supported by British Academy/ Leverhulme Small Research Grant, 2014-2016]

Sidonius Apollinaris: A Comprehensive Commentary for the 21st Century [a Leverhulme-funded International Network, based in Edinburgh and involving scholars from the Universities of Amsterdam, Basel, Naples, Padua, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, 2014-2017]  

• Various subhonours courses, especially non-beginners’ Latin (1c, 1d, 2a, 2b). Authors taught include Catullus, Juvenal, Lucretius, Ovid, Petronius, Rutilius Namatianus, and Vergil. 
• Late Latin: Autobiographical Narratives in Late Antiquity [Augustine, Ammianus Marcellinus, Rutilius Namatianus]
• Early Virgil [Eclogues and Georgics]
• Tacitus Annals
• Martial and Juvenal
• Ammianus Marcellinus and the Roman Empire of the Fourth Century
• The Emperor in the Late Roman World
• Literature and Society in the Age of Trajan
• Latin Language A and B [prose composition and metre]

The base of the obelisk of Theodosius in Constantinople

• I often teach a Latin Text Seminar, a course for which the texts investigated change annually; authors previously taught include Claudian, Ammianus Marcellinus, Rutilius Namatianus, Petronius, Sidonius.
• I have also taught Period in Ancient History and A Topic in Late Antique and Byzantine History.

I have also supervised external students at the universities of San Marino (on Sidonius, sole supervisor, graduated 2021) and St Andrews (on Suetonius, second supervisor, graduated 2021).