Workshops & Symposia
As exchanges between scholars working across the many fields of antiquity is a key aspect of its vision, the Cunard Center organizes international symposia on a variety of topics that transcend any single area of inquiry.
About Global Antiquity
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Overview
Since its founding in 2022 at UCLA, Global Antiquity has been engaged in the production, support, and dissemination of scholarship on ancient worlds. It promotes research within the boundaries of traditional fields, grounded in geographical areas encompassing eastern, southern, central and western Asia as well as parts of Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Mediterranean. But, more importantly, it brings these areas into dialogue to advance a more capacious treatment of ancient worlds, emphasizing the relationships and entanglements among past cultures, as well as underlining the relevance of this perspective for the present. The impressive network of scholars affiliated with Global Antiquity is notable for the range of methodological approaches they bring to bear – literary, historical, philological, and archaeological.
‘A new, higher form of humanism’
The new UCLA Jeffrey P. Cunard Center for Global Antiquity, established in 2026, embraces this vision of ancient worlds through an expanded research program. The Center also provides support for faculty research and graduate recruitment, organizes curricular development, and shares its work via robust publication and media initiatives. Much of this information can be found on our website, as open access to the output of the Center is key to its success. This broad reach ensures that the importance of ancient worlds as humanity’s common patrimony is fully recognized by an engaged audience extending across the cosmopolis of Los Angeles, the nation, and the world.
Research Initiatives
Lecture Series
The Cunard Center organizes a variety of lecture series. From formal events presented by world-renowned distinguished scholars to casual lunch workshops featuring the latest research by UCLA faculty, these events are always free and open to the public.
Video Library
The Cunard Center’s Video Library is a free, digital repository of cutting-edge lectures delivered by distinguished faculty and scholars at our events.
Support for Faculty and Graduate Students
In order to promote new, cutting-edge scholarship, the Cunard Center provides meaningful support for faculty and graduate students who wish to conduct research on ancient worlds. Their work may innovate within the boundaries of traditional fields or partake in a more expansive, interdisciplinary vision of the past.
As such, the Cunard Center seeks to fill lacunae by promoting humanities-based perspectives on ancient worlds at a time when other opportunities are becoming increasingly limited.
Current grants include Faculty Fellowship Awards, distributed to ladder faculty at UCLA, and Graduate Recruitment Awards, intended to enhance UCLA’s competitiveness for the most highly recruited graduate students.
Curricular Initiatives
For the Cunard Center effectively to impact the intellectual discourse on the study of ancient worlds at UCLA, it is incumbent on its affiliates to introduce thoughtfully curated undergraduate and graduate curricula. These courses, organized directly by the Cunard Center, encompass teaching from affiliated faculty across and beyond the division. They will afford an expansive vision of the ancient worlds to a new generation of students and emerging scholars.
The comparative study of the past will equip UCLA students with the intellectual tools to engage critically with the reception of past human experiences and allow them to discern the rich tapestry of past cultures as humanity’s common patrimony: one that continues to shape perspectives in the present. Interactions with student interlocutors may also stimulate the emergence of new domains of historical inquiry, identify existing lacunae in UCLA’s coverage of ancient worlds, and help set future research priorities.
Current offerings include AN N EA/CLASSIC M75: Kings, Heroes, and Sorceresses in Ancient and Modern Imaginations, and a second course on Ancient Engineering, presently under development.
