MILENA MELFI

Lecturer in Classical Archaeology, Faculty of Classics
and New College
Curator of the Cast Gallery

Contact
Email: milena.melfi@classics.ox.ac.uk
ORCID: 0000-0001-8316-3777
University of Oxford webpages
Faculty of Classics
New College
Beyond the borders

Biography

I am an archaeologist of the ancient Greek world, a Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the Faculty of Classics, and the Curator of the Cast Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum. From 2008 I have been also a Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at New College.

I received my education in Classics in Italy, at the Universities of Pisa and Messina. I have been a Fellow of the Italian (SAIA) and British (BSA) Schools of Archaeology in Athens, and of the American Academy in Rome, and I held visiting positions at the University of Padova and Macerata, at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens), at the Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard) and at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies (Princeton). Since my arrival at the Ashmolean, in 2004, I have been looking after the collection of casts of Greek and Roman sculptures and co-curated two main cast exhibitions: ‘Gods in Colour. Coloured Sculpture in Classical Antiquity’ (2014) and ‘Antinous: boy made god’ (2018/19).

As a field archaeologist, after early experiences in Crete and Sicily, from 2008 to 2016 I joined the Italian-Albanian-UK excavations at the site of Hadrianopolis (Albania); from 2016 I have been the co-director of the excavations at the ‘Plutonium’ or ‘Temple of Pluto’ at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, and from 2019 I lead the excavations of the Hellenistic site at Dobra/Levadhja (Albania).

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Research

My research focuses on in the archaeology of Greece, with a special interest for the Hellenistic and early Roman period. I am particularly interested in periods and areas of cultural change and transformation, and in the ways historical phenomena affected the material record. I have been working extensively on the archaeology of religion and on the redefinition of the role, functioning and frequentation of Greek religious sites, starting from the combined study of material and written sources.

I have written books on the sanctuaries and cult of Asklepios and on the sanctuaries of Hellenistic Greece and I am currently working on the archaeology of Epiros and those regions of northern Greece, traditionally considered untouched by the world of the classical Greek polis.

As a curator of casts, I have been trying to use and promote casts as historical and cultural objects in their own right, rather than mere copies of distant originals, as traditionally conceived in academia. Plaster casts have provided over the years an opportunity for the dissemination and appropriation of visual culture and, as all museum objects, are inextricably connected to purposely created cultural narratives. My recent research project 'Casts and Colonialism' addresses specifically the political and didactic use of casts at time of modern colonialisms and imperialisms.

Teaching

I teach most core and optional papers in Greek and Roman archaeology at undergraduate level, with a special focus in on the Hellenistic period at graduate level.

I am the convenor of the UG courses of Hellenistic Art and Archaeology, and Rome, Italy and the Hellenistic East, and of the PG option the Archaeology of Greek Religion. I supervise UG and MPhil thesis in most topic within Greek archaeology.

Doctoral supervision

I am happy to supervise topics within the archaeology of Hellenistic and Roman Greece, ancient religion, memory, change and cultural history. I also supervise theses relating to the use of casts, copies and replicas of Greek and Roman objects in museum displays, especially in connection with colonial/imperial policies.

Current doctoral students:

Isabella Jaeger: Wine, Worship and Uncertainty: Deciphering the Archaeology of Dionysiac cult in Magna Grecia.

Amalia Wickstead: Decolonizing collections: The reception and consumption of classical casts in pedagogy in the British Empire (AHRC CDP co-supervision with Phiroze Vasunia)

Previous doctoral students:

Dan Etches: Ἀδρίας. A Study of Mobility in and around the Adriatic, c. 600-200 BC (AHRC co-supervision with Nino Luraghi)

Chiara Marabelli: Original Copies? Readdressing the Value of Classical Cast Collections in Contemporary Museum Practices Supervisor (AHRC co-supervision with Sandra Dudley)

Abbey Ellis: The Castness of the Things”: A Visitor's-Eye View of Value in the Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum (AHRC CDP co-supervision with Sandra Dudley)

Jessica Piccinini: The shrine of Dodona in the Archaic and Classical ages (co-supervision with Robert Parker)