Founded in 2022, Global Antiquity brings together scholars and community members from UCLA, the greater Los Angeles area, and around the globe. It supports all approaches to ancient studies while also promoting a new dialogue that foregrounds the equivalency of past human experiences.

At UCLA, numerous faculty currently specialize in various fields of ancient studies. Within the Division of the Humanities, they represent the departments of Art History, Asian Languages and Cultures, Classics, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures as well as the following centers and programs: Digital Humanities, Indo-European Studies, the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of the Hellenic Culture. Global Antiquity also extends beyond the Humanities and engages with scholars from the departments of Anthropology and History as well as the Archaeology Interdepartmental Program, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.

Research and Services

Global Antiquity aims to realize its mission through the collaborative efforts of scholars working on the greatest diversity of ancient worlds possible. By combing these perspectives with the strengths and resources of UCLA, the institute hopes to inspire conversations on how the wholistic awareness of the past may encourage a more empathic and accepting view of cultures in the present. The core activities that help to accomplish this are first a research component that capitalizes on the intellectual community of greater Los Angeles to organize lectures, workshops, and conferences as well as to support collaborative and individual research. To this end, Global Antiquity also serves as a clearinghouse for faculty engaged in the study of ancient worlds, offering public programming for the wider (global) audience(s) and disseminating it digitally. Complementing this research will be a curricular component that aims to create new courses, which raise awareness and appreciation of the equivalency of past human experiences. Additionally, Global Antiquity supports the ancient studies community at UCLA by offering grant services, of which faculty applying for institutional grants may make use.

Scope of a “Global” Antiquity

In terms of its chronological and geographic scope, Global Antiquity strives to be as capacious as possible, as it recognizes that conceptions of what constitutes the ancient past may vary greatly between cultures, communities, and regions. In terms of geographic coverage, it welcomes scholars working on all areas of the globe from Africa, west, central, and east Asia, and Europe to the Americas and the Pacific. As diversity is not merely expressed in terms of territorial coverage, Global Antiquity is particularly concerned with themes or areas of inquiry which may be underrepresented in the academy and/or which have previously been relegated to the periphery of established fields. Chronologically, Global Antiquity aims to avoid strict chronological ranges, as these may default to a European or North American worldview. Instead, the institute encourages each field of study, culture, or community to define and conceptualize its own antiquity, creating a set of flexible but coherent chronological scopes.

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