ANCIENT GREEK AMONG THE FEW PROGRAMMES TO BE REOPENED IN COPENHAGEN

Today´s first piece of news presents a mixed picture of the developments taking place at the Faculty of Humanities of Copenhagen University. On the one hand, we are pleased to let you know that the study programme of Ancient Greek will be reopened in 2017. In this regard, FIEC would like to thank all those who made an effort in order to save Ancient Greek at this important European University. We strongly hope that professional education in the field of Classical Studies will be provided in the long term and we are grateful to the University of Copenhagen for reconsidering the issue. On the other hand, we are truly sorry to learn that the majority of the thirteen Study Programmes in question find themselves in a much more precarious situation: Some will be merged with other fields, with consequences we cannot foresee; and others will be closed altogether.

As could be read in our blog, in January Copenhagen´s head of the Faculty of Humanities had decided to close thirteen smaller undergraduate programmes due to a significant cut in funding by the Danish government. Accordingly, all programmes affected, including Ancient Greek, will not admit any new students in 2016. However, after various factors as well as potential consequences have been considered in the course of the last months, a new plan has been devised and publicly announced:

Ancient Greek, Eskimology, American Indian Language and Culture Studies, and Contemporary India and South Asia Studies are the only study programmes to be reopened in 2017. These four are said to be retained not because of a higher number of students, but because “the university either has a national obligation or uniquely strong academic environments”. At the same time, the new plan still has devastating effects upon several other study programmes in the field of culture and language: While there is still some hope for five smaller programmes that might be merged to form larger area studies, “Finnish, Indology, Tibetology and South East Asian Studies, comprising Thai and Indonesian, will all close as full study programmes”.

Please follow the link to see more detailed information. Of course, we will keep you updated with the latest news about this matter.

POSITIONS IN UPPSALA AND GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

What is more, we would like to make you aware of two academic positions offered by Swedish Universities:

Firstly, a 4-year PhD position in Latin is to be filled at the University of Uppsala. The deadline for applications it the 1^st of June 2016. Please follow the link to read further information.

Secondly, a permanent post as lecturer in Latin is offered by the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science of Gothenburg University. For more information, click here.

FRANCO MONTANARI IN BERLIN, GERMANY

On another note, we would like to give you a short report of Franco Montanari´s visit to the biennial congress of the DAV Deutscher Altphilologenverbandt (German Association of Classicists) that took place from the 29^th of March to the 2^nd of April 2016 in Berlin, Germany. Prof. Montanari did not only represent FIEC to the numerous lecturers, teachers, and students who attended the meeting of DAV, that is one of its members; but he also gave a both informative and entertaining talk on the history of Dictionaries of Ancient Greek in general, and on the challenges as well as the potential of new dictionaries in particular. The audience was especially interested in the new German version of his standard dictionary GI – Vocabolario della lingua greca, which is to be published in the near future. Furthermore, Prof. Montanari talked about the project entitled “Words in Progress”, that is an international database of corrections and improvements to the major dictionaries of Ancient and Byzantine Greek currently in use. The platform can thus be seen as a continuously enriched and collaboratively collated supplement keeping lexicographical works up to date with the latest scientific research as well as with the changes of modern languages.

In case you are interested, you may visit the “Words in Progress” project online.