Classics Reunion

• 10.30am – Tea and welcome
• 11.00am – Talk 1: Dr Michael McOsker (UCL & Oxford) | Reading Charcoal: New Virtually Unrolled Stoic and Epicurean Texts from Herculaneum
• 12.00pm – Talk 2: Dr Connor Beattie (Brasenose) | The Creation of a Roman Empire in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BCE
• 1.00pm – Pre-lunch drinks
• 1.45pm – Lunch

Dr Michael McOsker (UCL & Oxford) | Reading Charcoal: New Virtually Unrolled Stoic and Epicurean Texts from Herculaneum

Michael has been working on the Herculaneum papyri since his PhD on Philodemus of Gadara’s theory of poetry (now On the Good Poem According to Philodemus, OUP 2021). With David Armstrong, he published a new edition of Philodemus’ On Anger with a lengthy introduction and the first English translation (Society for Biblical Literature, 2020). He has been a member of the Vesuvius Challenge Papyrology Team for three years and is currently a teaching and research fellow in Herculaneum papyrology in Oxford’s Faculty of Classics—and an associate member of the Brasenose SCR.

Dr Connor Beattie (Brasenose) | The Creation of a Roman Empire in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BCE

Connor is currently a Junior Research Fellow at BNC, having completed his DPhil in Roman imperialism at Corpus Christi College in 2025 under the supervision of Nicholas Purcell. Before that he completed an MPhil in Roman and Greek History and a BA in Ancient and Modern History at Magdalen College. Currently his research focuses on explaining the origins and formation of the Roman empire in the Middle Republic as well as the culture of imperialism in the ancient Mediterranean more broadly.