Naoíse Mac Sweeney

Naoíse Mac Sweeney
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
ThesisCommunity identity and material culture : the case of protohistoric western Anatolia (2007)
Academic work
DisciplineAncient History | Classical Archaeology
InstitutionsUniversity of Vienna

Naoíse Mac Sweeney is a British archaeologist, historian, writer, and academic. Since 2020 she has been Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna.[1]

Early life and education

Mac Sweeney was born in 1982 to Chinese and Irish parents in London.[2][3] She studied for an undergraduate degree in Classics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a Master's at UCL in Ancient History.[1] She completed a PhD at Cambridge in 2007 with a thesis titled "Community Identity in Protohistoric Western Anatolia".[4]

Career

Following her PhD she spent time in policy research working on conflict and international development.[5] From 2008 she held a Junior Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Classics and Fitzwilliam College at the University of Cambridge. In 2011 she joined the University of Leicester as a Lecturer in Ancient History and Classical Archaeology. In 2020 she was promoted to Professor of Ancient History at Leicester, before being appointed later the same year as a Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna.[1]

Her research focusses on aspects of cultural interaction and identity, with a focus on the ancient Greek world and Anatolia from the Iron Age to the Classical period.[6] Her 2018 book Troy: Myth, City, Icon explores the mythic, the archaeological, and cultural significance of Troy. It was short-listed for the 2019 PROSE awards in the category Archaeology & Ancient History.[7][8] In 2020 Mac Sweeney received an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World.[2][9]

She was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2015.[10] In 2017, she held a visiting Research Fellowship at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies.[11] Mac Sweeney co-ordinates the international network 'Claiming the Classical', exploring the use of classical antiquity within contemporary political rhetoric.[12] Since 2019 she is the academic editor of Anatolian Studies, the Journal of the British Institute at Ankara,[13] and served as a judge for the Runciman Award.[14] She appeared as a presenter on the BBC TV series Digging for Britain in 2019.[15]

Selected publications

Books

  • 2011. Community Identity and Archaeology: Dynamic Communities at Aphrodisias and Beycesultan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • 2013. Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 2014. (ed.) Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies Dialogues and Discourses. University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • 2018. Troy: Myth, City, Icon. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2018. (co-authored with Dr. Jan Haywood) Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War: Dialogues on Tradition. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2023. The West: A New History of an Old Idea. London: Ebury.

Journal articles

  • 2004. Social complexity and population: a study in the Early Bronze Age Aegean. Papers of the Institute of Archaeology 15: 53–66.
  • 2009. Beyond ethnicity: the overlooked diversity of group identities. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22.1: 101–126.
  • 2010. Hittites and Arzawans: a view from western Anatolia. Anatolian Studies 60: 7–24.
  • 2017. Separating fact from fiction in the Ionian migration. Hesperia 38: 379–421.

References

  1. ^ a b c "Mac Sweeney, Naoise". klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at (in German). Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Univ.-Prof. Dr. Naoise Mac Sweeney". Universitat Wien. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
  3. ^ "Naoise Mac Sweeney Archives". Andrew Nurnberg Associates International Ltd. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  4. ^ Mac Sweeney, Naoise (2007). Community identity and material culture : the case of protohistoric western Anatolia (Ph.D). University of Cambridge.
  5. ^ Mac Sweeney, Naoíse. Tanburn, Jim (ed.). "Private sector development in post-conflict countries: a review of current literature and practice" (PDF). www.enterprise-development.org. Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 June 2017.
  6. ^ Mac Sweeney, Naoíse. "Prof Naoíse Mac Sweeney". University of Leicester. Archived from the original on 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  7. ^ "Troy: Myth, City, Icon". classicsforall.org.uk. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  8. ^ "Association of American Publishers Announces Finalists for 2019 PROSE Awards". AAP. 16 January 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  9. ^ MIGMAG – Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World. "European Commission EU Research Results".
  10. ^ "Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2015 | The Leverhulme Trust". www.leverhulme.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  11. ^ "Volume 5, Issue 2". Research Bulletin. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  12. ^ Mac Sweeney, Naoise (2019). "Claiming the Classical: the Greco-Roman world in contemporary political discourse" (PDF). Council of University Classical Departments Bulletin. 48.
  13. ^ "Editorial board". Cambridge Core. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  14. ^ "The judges – Runciman Award". runcimanaward.org. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
  15. ^ "Digging for Britain (TV Series 2010– )". IMDb.