Alison Sharrock

I came to Manchester in August, 2000, after eleven years at the University of Keele. Previous to that, I studied at the University of Liverpool (BA, 1984) and the University of Cambridge (PhD, 1988). I have been Editor of the Journal of Roman Studies, and also Director of Research in the School of Arts, Histories & Cultures. I spent several years as Head of the Division of Archaelogy, Religions and Theology, Classics and Ancient History, and then, after institutional reorganisation, as Head of the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology, and Egyptology, within the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures. My particular interests are in the teaching of Latin literature and language.

I currently hold a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, entitled 'Ovid and the Environmental Crisis', meaning that I am on research leave 2024-7.

My research interests range across Latin poetry from Plautus to the imperial age. I began with (elegiac) Ovid and to (metamorphic) Ovid I have returned, with a range of projects, particularly in the Metamorphoses, which is currently the main focus of my attention. In between, I made a foray into Roman comedy. The other strand to my interest is in literary theory, including feminist readings of Classical literature.  Most recently, I have developed a particular interest in ecocriticism, which is the focus of my Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. Studying ancient poetry through the lens of environmental concerns has given me a renewed enthusiasm for what literature can offer to a troubled world.

Recent PhD supervision (award dates)

• 2024 - Lucy Mudie: Magic Mirrors: Mirror Metaphors in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria
• 2021 - Matteo Dessimone Pallavera: Time and space in Lucan’s Pharsalia

• 2019 - Julene Abad Del Vecchio: Statius' Achilleid and its Literary Predecessors. A Tragic Reading of the Achilleid

• 2018 - Eleni Ntanou: Ovid and Virgil’s Pastoral Poetry 

• 2017 - Helen Dalton: Banquet of Death: Alimentary Imagery in Statius’ Thebaid