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CHORUS people

Building on foundations laid by Fiona Macintosh and the late Christian Biet, the CHORUS research network brings together members from over 30 institutions based in:

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Czech Republic 
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Poland
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France 
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Portugal
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Italy 
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Spain
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Netherlands 
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Switzerland
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Norway 
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United Kingdom

Czech Republic

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Photograph of Eliška Kubartová

Eliška Kubartová is a classical philologist and theatre scholar at Palacký University, Olomouc. She specialises in the theatre and performance culture of the Middle Ages and the Roman Republic, especially Plautine comedy and its stage translation.

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Photograph of Alena Sarkissian

Alena Sarkissian teaches at Charles University in Prague. She graduated in Theatre Studies (Ph.D.) and Classical Greek (M.A.). Her research focuses on the study of Greek theatrical culture and its later reception, both theoretical and on stage. She collaborates as an expert consultant with Czech theatres and leading Czech directors.

France

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Déborah Bucchi is Agrégée in classics and has just completed a thesis entitled “The divine on stage : ancient and contemporary experiences » supervised by William Marx and Cléo Carastro.  This year, she teaches comparative literature at the Collège de France, and focuses on publishing her thesis.

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Black adn white photograph of Maria Constantinou

Maria Constantinou is agrégée in classics and a doctoral student in Performance Studies at Paris Nanterre since 2022. Her thesis explores the modern and contemporary  performance reception of satyr plays in France, Greece and the UK under the supervision of Tiphaine Karsenti et d’Alexa Piqueux.

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Photograph of Diane Cuny

Diane Cuny is Professor of ancient Greek language and literature at the University of Tours. Her research focuses mainly on ancient Greek literature. She is especially interested in Greek tragedy and prepares a French translation of the fragments of Sophocles. Another of her interests is the study of mythological figures, their take-up in Greco-Latin literature and their posterity.

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Alexia Dedieu is a postdoctoral researcher in Greek literature and language at  Aix Marseille Université. She works on the Byzantine and early modern reception of tragic authors and focuses on philology as a vector for the reception of ancient tragedies, specifically how scholarly translation, manuscripts, printed editions and paratexts contribute to shape the reception of ancient tragic playwrights.

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Photograph of Cécile Dudouyt

Cécile Dudouyt is the coordinator of the CHORUS network and one of its co-founders. APGRD research associate and a member of Pléiade (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord), she explores translation as a creative process in the reception of ancient drama in English and in French from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.

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Photograph of Léonore Finck

Léonore Finck is a PhD student in comparative literature at the University of Tours. Her thesis deals with the representation of physical suffering in Greek tragedies and its reception from the end of the 18th century to the present day in France, Germany, and the UK. Her research focuses on stagings, translations and adaptations of: Philoctetes’ crisis, Heracles’ agony, Io’s madness, and Hippolytus’ death.

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Photograph of Sylvie Humbert-Mougin

Sylvie Humbert-Mougin is Professor of compared literature at the University of Tours. Her research focuses on the uses of ancient cultural models and artefacts, theatre in particular. She has published a series of landmark books about the translation of ancient Greek drama.

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Filippos Karaferias holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Grenoble-Alpes in France specializing in ancient Greek tragedy and its reception in Greece during the 20th and 21st centuries. His research interests also encompass issues related to the translation of ancient drama in Greece and the didactics of ancient languages. 

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Photograph of Tiphaine Karsenti

Tiphaine Karsenti is Professor of performance studies at the University of Paris Nanterre. Her main research topics concern the links between theater, history and politics in early modern France, and the uses of ancient myth in theater from the Renaissance to the contemporary stage. 

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Photograph of Claire Lechevalier

Claire Lechevalier is professor of comparative literature at the University of Caen-Normandie. Her research focuses on the history of translation, especially of drama, and on the reception of the Antiquity on European stages.

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Photograph of Anne Morvan

Anne Morvan is Agrégée de Lettres Classiques and holds a Ph-D in Ancient Literature and Languages with a thesis entitled “Voicing Cassandra? Study of a paradoxical stage figure in Greek tragedy and its receptions in the Renaissance” mainly in the French and Italian Renaissance.

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Romain Piana is assistant professor at the Institut d’Etudes Théâtrales of Sorbonne Nouvelle university (Paris) and is the editor of the database “Théâtre antique en France”, an electronic repertory of productions of classical drama performed in France.

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Photograph of Lucie Thévenet

Lucie Thévenet is an Assistant Professor in ancient Greek literature at Nantes Université. Specialist in ancient Greek tragedy, her research focuses on the adaptation of mythological material to theatre and to the constraints of antique stage representation.

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Photograph of Clotilde Thouret

Clotilde Thouret is Professor of Comparative literature at Paris Nanterre University since 2022. Her research and teaching interests focus on European theater (theater and politics, controversies and polemics, spectatorship and aesthetic experience) and comics (superheroic genre, relationship between comics and literature). From 2013 to 2019 she co-directed, with François Lecercle, the project «The hatred of theatre».

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Photograph of Anaïs Tillier

Anaïs Tillier is a researcher in performance studies at UGA in Grenoble. Her thesis was about theatrical adaptations of ancient epic poetry. Her current research focuses on the reception of female characters and she has recently published about contemporary receptions of Helen of Troy, Briseis and Penthesileia.

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Photograph of Charitini Tsikoura

Charitini Tsikoura holds a PhD in Theatrical Studies (Paris Nanterre University) and is also a choreographer and former dancer. Her research focuses on gender related questions in the performing arts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in Europe and more specifically in the rewritings, adaptations, staging and reception of Ancient Greek drama.

Italy

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Photograph of Marie-Claire Adamo

Marie-Claire Adamo is a second-year PhD candidate in Performing Arts at the University of Parma (supervisor: Francesca Bortoletti). Her research explores the reception of classical antiquity in Renaissance Venice, focusing on the performative dimensions of festivals between 1450 and 1550. 

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Vassilina Avramidi is a PhD student in European Literatures at the University of Bologna, where she also teaches modern Greek language and culture. Her thesis focuses on lyric rewritings of Penelope from 1968 to this day.

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Photograph of Francesca Bortoletti

Francesca Bortoletti is Associate Professor at the University of Parma and affiliated member at the CSPW at the University of Minnesota, where she worked until March 2021.  She is directing a digital project on classical heritage and performing arts, FRIDA (Festivals in Renaissance Italy: a Digital Atlas).

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Davide Iengo is a student of Classical Philology at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore. His research interests revolve mainly around ancient and classical lyrical poetry, theatre and oratory, alongside with a strong interest towards languages and the processes, forms and aims of translation, being the main theme of his current research work on Aristophanes’ reception in Poland.

Netherlands

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Eleftheria Ioannidou

Eleftheria Ioannidou is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Groningen. Her research interests lie in the 20th-century adaptation and performance of Greek tragedy. She writes on the relationship between ancient Greek theatre with nationalism and fascism.

Norway

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Photograph of Alexander Hammar

Alexander Hammar is  a PhD fellow in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network “From Antiquity to Community: rethinking classical heritage through citizen humanities”. His dissertation illuminates the non-institutional interactions with Greco-Roman antiquity in Danish society during the latter half of the 19th century by employing a microhistorical theoretical approach.

Poland

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Black and white photograph of Małgorzata Budzowska

Gosia Budzowska is Associate Professor in the Department of Drama and Theatre, University of Lodz in Poland. She is Research Associate of the University of Oxford's Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. Her academic interest focuses on Classical Reception Studies and contemporary Polish theatre, about which she publishes academic books, articles and theatre reviews.

Portugal

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Duarte Anjos is a researcher of CEC (Centro de Estudos Clássicos) at the University of Lisbon. Currently, he is working towards his PhD thesis, in the same institution with a scholarship granted by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia). This thesis is titled, “Ways of contact with the Intelligible in Platonism and Christianity in Late Antiquity”.

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Photograph of Oliver Baldwin

Oliver Baldwin is assistant professor at the University of Madrid. He is currently working on the Queer Tragedy project, an international performance and cultural history of LGBTQI+ stagings of Graeco-Roman tragedy between 1969 and 2019. His work focuses mainly on the uses of Graeco-Roman antiquity as an identity and discursive framework, and the staging of ancient tragedy as performative experimentation.

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Photograph of Vanessa Fernandes

Vanessa Fernandes is a PhD Candidate with an FCT grant and a researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies (CEC-FLUL) of the University of Lisbon. Her research, combining emotion theory, cognitive science, and performance studies, focuses on how audiences create emotional connections with Attic Comedy, particularly the plays of Aristophanes.

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Photograph of Sofia Frade

Sofia Frade is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Lisbon. Her research interests are political receptions of Attic tragedy in its original context, as well as contemporary reception of Greek drama.

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David Mesquita is a PhD Candidate with an FCT grant as well as a researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies (CEC-FLUL) of the University of Lisbon. His doctoral thesis focuses on the reception of Classical medico-philosophical texts in the XVI-XVII centuries, starting from the study of the controversies of Estêvão Rodrigues de Castro (1559-1638).

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Photograph of Sandra Vinagre

Sandra Vinagre is a researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon. She holds a PhD in Classical Reception Studies, where she works on the reception of Greek tragedies in political contexts, both as a political tool and a vehicle for social change.

Spain

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Photograph of Hugo Martín Isabel

Hugo Martín Isabel is a pre-doctoral researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research bears on the transmission and reception of theatrical texts of Antiquity, from the 15th century to the present day. His publications include studies on the use of myth in contemporary autofiction, the revision of protagonist characters in tragedy and the application of new dramatic forms to ancient comedy. 

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Photograph of Laura Monrós-Gaspar

Laura Monrós-Gaspar is Full Professor in English at the Universitat de València, where she leads the research group “Literature, Arts and Performance”. Between 2015 and 2024 she was Head of the Area of Performing Arts at the office of the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Culture at the UV. Her research focuses on the reception of Antiquity in the nineteenth century, on which she has published extensively.  

Switzerland

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Matteo Capponi teaches Ancient Greek at the University of Lausanne. He also provides an initiation to classical texts and mythology at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on the relationship between words and gestures. In parallel to his academic work, Matteo is involved in translating for the stage and directs TALMA, a company specialising in the staging of ancient texts.

United Kingdom

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Photograph of Claire Barnes

Claire Barnes is a fourth year doctoral student at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, working on the long 20th century’s philosophical and popular understandings of ‘authenticity’, looking at how these have been applied to classical tropes across the period - particularly those implying an ‘authentic’ connection with classical antiquity.

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Black and white photograph of Ezra Baudou

Ezra Baudou is a theatre maker and theatre researcher. Ezra was formerly Marie Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral fellow at the the University of Oxford's Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (2019-2021); they also work on theatre productions as a dramaturg. 

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Photograph of Marcus Bell

Marcus Bell completed their DPhil, 'Choreographing Tragedy into the 21st Century', at the University of Oxford in 2023. They are Associate Lecturer in Theatre & Performance at Goldsmiths College, where they lecture on queer theory, experimental performance practice, global performance histories, decolonial approaches to performance, dance, and performance ecologies.

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Photograph of Marie-Louise Crawley

Marie-Louise Crawley is a choreographer, artist researcher, and Assistant Professor in Dance and Cultural Engagement at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University. Her research interests include dance and museums, and areas of intersection between Classics and Dance Studies such as ancient dance and the performance of epic.

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Photograph of Stephe Harrop

Stephe Harrop is Associate Professor of Drama at Liverpool Hope University. Her teaching and research focuses on contemporary storytelling practices, spoken-word performance, Greek tragedy and classical receptions, and performer training. Stephe also creates work and tours internationally as a storytelling artist, her repertoire playfully entangling ancient and contemporary narratives.

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Photograph of Lucy Jackson

Lucy Jackson is Associate Professor in ancient Greek literature at Durham University. Her first monograph, The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE, was published in 2020. She has co-edited a volume on early modern translations of Greek drama (De Gruyter, 2023), and her latest research focuses on the political potential of the dramatic chorus in both the ancient and the modern world.

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Photograph of Leo Kershaw

Leo Kershaw holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, for which he researched performances and adaptations of Medea in South Africa from the 19th to the  21st century. He is a Junior Research Fellow in Greek Mythology at Christ Church College, Oxford (2025-2029), working on receptions of Greek tragedy and comedy in South African protest theatre during the Black Consciousness Movement.

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Photograph of Fiona Macintosh

Fiona Macintosh is Emeritus Professor of Classical Reception, Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. She was the Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) from 2010 to 2024 and Reader in Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford (2008-2014), she first joined the APGRD as Senior Research Fellow in January 2000.

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A headshot of Justine McConnell.

Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London where she has worked since 2016. Previously, she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, researching contemporary African, Caribbean, and ancient Greek poetics.

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Photograph of Marchella Ward

Chella Ward is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University. She is currently working on a project inspired by Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), that reads classicism as a discourse of Eurocentrism and attempts to theorise counter-classicism in response. She is one of the podcast hosts of Radio ReOrient, a podcast dedicated to history, decoloniality and Muslimness.

With thanks to Christian Biet

CHORUS is dedicated to the memory of Christian Biet (1952-2020) who, along with Fiona Macintosh, established the annual collaborative symposia between Nanterre and Oxford from which the CHORUS network grew.

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A photograph of Christian Biet at the Festival d'Avignon
Professor Christian Biet in 2016 at the Festival d'Avignon

Contact CHORUS

The CHORUS organisation committee can be contacted at receptionchorus@gmail.com