Guest Lecturers

RAYMOND ASQUITH

Raymond Asquith served 18 years in the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He spent three years in Moscow (1983-1985), seven years in the Cabinet Office covering Soviet and East European political, military and economic developments (1985-1992) and was a founding member of the British Embassy in Kiev (1992-1997).

In 1997 he left British government service to pursue private business interests in the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe, chiefly in energy and agriculture. He continues to work in Ukraine and is the founder and Chairman of Zander Corporation Limited, an environmental remediation company, with interests in Ukraine, Southern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Having studied Classics at Oxford, he has a particular interest in the history of the Black Sea area. On the death of his father in January 2011 he assumed the title of The Earl of Oxford & Asquith.

Prof TREVOR BRYCE

Emeritus Professor Trevor Bryce (born 1940) is a Classicist and and Near Eastern historian. He has published extensively on the Classical and Near Eastern civilizations: his most recent publications are The Kingdom of the Hittites (new edition), The Trojans and their Neighbours, which includes a discussion on the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations, and The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has held visiting Fellowships at Princeton, Oxford and Canberra. His university career has included appointments as Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of New England, Australia and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lincoln University, New Zealand. He was recently awarded a Doctor of Letters Degree at The University of Queensland, a rare award showing his excellent knowledge and expertise in this area of history.

Prof PAUL CARTLEGE

Paul Cartledge is the inaugural A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge University, where he has taught since 1979. He took his BA and DPhil at Oxford (his doctoral thesis on Spartan archaeology and history was supervised by Professor Sir John Boardman) and since 1981 has been a Fellow of Clare College Cambridge, where he is President of the Fellowship. He has written, co-written, edited or co-edited some 25 books, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, paperback 2002) and most recently Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2011).

He is generally reckoned one of the world's top experts on ancient Sparta and was adviser to the UK Channel 4 TV series 'The Spartans' presented by Bettany Hughes (with whom he has collaborated on 4 TV documentaries) and to the blockbuster Hollywood cartoon movie '300'. He appears regularly on radio as well as TV. Between 2006 and 2010 he held a Global Distinguished Professorship in the Theory and History of Democracy at New York University. He has been awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour by the President of Greece and is an honorary citizen of (modern) Sparta.

Dr DAVID CORDINGLY

Dr David Cordingly read Modern History at Oxford and has a doctorate from the University of Sussex. He was Keeper of Pictures at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and is the author of several books on marine art and naval history. His book Life among the Pirates (American title, Under the Black Flag) became a best-seller in Britain and the United States. His other books include Cochrane the Dauntless, Marine painting in England, and the much acclaimed Billy Ruffian: the Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon which was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4.

He has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution and many American museums as well as at the Hay Festival and other literary festivals in Britain. He was historical consultant for the movie Pirates of the Caribbean and has appeared in several television documentaries for the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

Prof ROBIN CORMACK

Emeritus Professor Robin Cormack is the author of many publications on the art history and culture of the Mediterranean, particularly on the world of Byzantium. He teaches at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. His current books in progress are on Classicism and on St Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai. His most recent book Icons was published by the British Museum, and focuses on how to study this art form from the collection in the museum. Robin was also curator of the highly successful exhibition "Byzantine 330-1453" at the Royal Academy, London in 2008/9. For him Sicily is the key to exploring the meeting of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Arabs and Western Europeans in an extraordinary mix of ideas.

KEVIN DEAN

A versatile artist & designer who has illustrated numerous books, designed textiles, wallpapers and tableware. Having trained at the Royal College of Art, Kevin Dean has worked with leading retailers, publishers and museums. Much of Kevin's work reflects his interest in plants and the natural environment. He draws almost everyday and his paintings and prints have been exhibited widely, both in the UK and abroad.

Kevin also designed much of the marble floral decoration within The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi, including the 18,000 sq metre, main courtyard or Sahan. The Grand Mosque, which opened in 2010 receives an estimated 250,000 visitors per month. He has worked in a number of Art Colleges as a visiting / part - time lecturer and often gives school workshops both in the UK and abroad. Kevin lives and works on the South Coast of England. A keen traveller, he has visited and painted all over the world, regularly travelling to the UAE.

Joining us in March from Mumbai to Cairo, Kevin has prepared classes in Drawing and Watercolour painting for our several days at sea.

Prof GREGORY DOWLING

Gregory Dowling graduated in English literature at the University of Oxford in 1978. Since 1979 he has lived in Italy. He has taught in Naples, Siena, Verona and, since 1981, in Venice. He is now Associate Professor of American Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His academic publications include a book on American narrative poetry, a book on Byron’s Venice, a co-edited anthology of American poetry about Venice and numerous articles on British and American literature. He has written the sightseeing pages of the Time Out Guide to Venice.

He is non-fiction editor for the journal Able Muse Review and is responsible for the section on British poetry of the Italian poetry journal Semicerchio. He has translated widely from the Italian. He has also published four thrillers set in England and Italy and is currently writing a crime-novel set in eighteenth-century Venice.

In his lecture "Venice Today: City of Culture or Mass-Tourism?", Gregory will present the problems facing this beautiful but fragile city, still medieval in its structures and even its transport system, in the age of mass tourism.

KATE GARNONS WILLIAMS

Kate Garnons Williams read Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Bristol and wrote her M.A. thesis on the Comedies of the 5th century dramatist, Aristophanes. Her first experience of teaching was at the English School in Nicosia, Cyprus, where her husband had been seconded to the UN for three years. During that time she used to guide parties of interested UN personnel to sites of archaeological interest all over the island, and during vacations she and her husband also visited ancient sites in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt as well as mainland Greece and the Greek islands.

On returning to the UK, Kate began teaching a course on Athens in 5th century B.C. for the Open University, and more recently she has taught on the History and Culture of Ancient Greece for the Distance Learning Programme run by Birmingham University.

Apart from academic lecturing, she has also lectured for NADFAS, and has also published a number of articles on subjects including 'Pythagoras and Broad Beans'. For the past 25 years she has also lectured on Classical subjects on a number of cruise ships.

ROBERT A. E. GORDON

Robert Gordon is a recently retired British diplomat, whose particular speciality is Burma, where he was British Ambassador from 1995-99. He is currently President of the Britain-Burma Society as well as chairman of Prospect Burma, an educational trust which has sponsored university studies for over 1500 Burmese students. As Head of the FCO’s South East Asia Department from 1999-2003, he was responsible for policy work across all ten ASEAN member states, visiting the area frequently as well as lecturing at Georgetown University, Washington.

Robert Gordon has an MA in Modern Languages from Magdalen College, Oxford. After serving as Ambassador to Vietnam from 2003-07, he has pursued academic and business interests, including lecturing at the University of Strasbourg and France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He was a panellist for Aung San Suu Kyi’s 2011 Reith lecture and for the discussion on Burma’s future at the 2011 Brighton Festival at which Aung San Suu Kyi was guest president. In 2008 he co-chaired an EU conference on aid to Burma after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis. He played a key role in Aung San Suu Kyi’s historic visit to the UK in June 2012 and the following month took part in the first official UK trade mission to Burma for sixteen years.

RAY HALE

Having spent many years in the Private Sector as an Industrial Health and Safety consultant, Ray has finally had the opportunity to follow his passion.

He is now a wildlife lecturer, author, photographer and naturalist. He enjoys sharing his experiences so much that he now leads groups of naturalists, researchers and eco-tourists into the rainforests of Borneo in search of endangered wildlife. He gives illustrated lectures around the United Kingdom and has been invited to lecture on Malaysian wildlife by a number of organisations within Sabah.

His subjects include Rainforest Conservation, Saving Endangered Species, The History of Sabah, Rajah Brooke and the Head Hunters of Borneo. Although he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of wildlife in general, his main field of study has always been centred around arachnids and he is a recognised World authority on the large so called “bird eating tarantulas” as well as the large number of species of spiders of the United Kingdom. He belongs to a number of organisations including the British Arachnological Society and the British Tarantula Society of which he is a council member.

He has written a number of articles on arachnology and in 1998 he published the book “An Introduction to the Spiders of the Genus Haplopelma: A Study of the Tarantulas of South East Asia”. He is currently writing a field guide to the spiders of Malaysia. He has had a number of his photographs published in entomological and arachnological journals.

Now based in Sussex, he regularly runs courses for the Sussex Wildlife Trust, contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes as a consultant and undertakes entomological habitat surveys for landowners and local authorities. His studies have taken him to many destinations around the World which have given him the opportunity to share his enthusiasm for nature and conservation with adult education classes, industry personnel and students alike. Over the last twenty years he has delivered many presentations to events and audiences. He is passionate about reconnecting people with nature and the conservation of the Worlds endangered species all of which infuse his wildlife lectures.

Prof KENNETH J. HAMMOND

Kenneth is Professor of Asian History at New Mexico State University. He received his PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 1994, and has taught at NMSU ever since. He has designed and taught courses on the history of China and Japan, and on Southeast Asian history through the colonial and modern periods, with special emphasis on the history of Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. He is also the founder of the Global History program at New Mexico State and teaches the Global History survey course covering the period from 1500 to the present. He has written and lectured on the role of Manila as a link in global trade between Spain and China in the early modern period, and on the development of Dutch and British colonialism in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Professor Hammond has travelled extensively in Southeast Asia, including working with a faculty development program in Vietnam in 1997. His current research includes a project on Chinese-Vietnamese relations in the 16th century, to be presented at the 2014 meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.

Prof ELVIRA HAMMOND

College Associate Professor of East Asian History at New Mexico State University Elvira Hammond first traveled to Asia thirty years ago as a student in Beijing, China. After receiving her Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Stanford University, she moved back to Beijing to work in educational travel throughout Asia for a decade. There, for example, she worked on developing collaborative initiatives between major museums in Thailand and Indonesia, including site visits in Bali.

In addition to teaching courses on East and Southeast Asian History at NMSU, she is also Co-Director of the Confucius Institute, which provides public programs in Chinese Language and Culture throughout the state. In her free time, she has traveled from Seoul to Singapore, Japan to Java and beyond, tasting new foods and developing recipes for Asian fusion cuisine.

ROBIN HANBURY-TENISON

Robin Hanbury-Tenison is a Founder and President of Survival International, the world’s leading organization supporting tribal peoples. Named by The Sunday Times as "the greatest explorer of the past 20 years,” he has been on over 30 expeditions including the first two crossings of South America: by land from Recife to Lima in 1958 and by river from the Orinoco to the River Plate in 1965. In 1977, as leader of the Royal Geographical Society’s largest expedition, he took 115 scientists to study the rainforests of Sarawak. This research and his book, Mulu: The Rainforest, started the international concern for tropical rainforests.

On Survival’s behalf, Robin has led several overseas missions, including visiting 33 Indian tribes as a guest of the Brazilian government in 1971; Indians of the Darien in Panama and Colombia in 1972; tribes of the outer islands of Indonesia in 1974 and 1975; and leading an investigation into excessive logging in Sarawak in 1988. He has assessed the status of the indigenous peoples of eastern Siberia (1992 and 1994) and northeast India (1995), the Bushmen of the Kalahari (1980 and 2005), and the Tuareg of the Central Sahara (1962-2003).

A graduate of Oxford University, he has been a Council Member and is a Gold Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, winner of the Pio Manzu Award, an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellow, a Trustee of the Ecological Foundation, and a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Among Robin’s many publications are: The Rough and The Smooth, A Question of Survival, A Pattern of Peoples, The Yanomami, White Horses Over France, A Ride Along the Great Wall, Fragile Eden, Spanish Pilgrimage, Land of Eagles, and his two autobiographies: Worlds Apart – An Explorer’s Life and Worlds Within – Reflections in the Sand. He is editor of The Oxford Book of Exploration, The Seventy Great Journeys in History, The Great Explorers, The Modern Explorers, and Echoes of a Vanished World: A Traveller's Lifetime in Pictures.

PHILLIP HARDING

Phillip Harding was born in Harrow, England. He studied Classics at St. Marylebone Grammar School in London, St. Andrews University in Scotland (MA) and the University of California at Berkeley (PhD). He taught all aspects of Greek and Roman civilisation at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for 36 years (1968-2004), during the last five of which he was Head of the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies. He was Thomas Day Seymour Fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1967-8), Visiting Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1975-6) and Visiting Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley (1987-8).

He has written numerous articles and four books, the most recent of which is The Story of Athens (Routledge, 2008). The focus of his research has been the history, epigraphy and historiography of fourth-century Athens. In retirement he is still writing and has lectured for most major cruise lines throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, Imbi. They have two children and four grandchildren.

DENISE HEYWOOD

Denise Heywood is a lecturer, author, journalist and photographer. She worked in Cambodia as a journalist for three years, and has also worked in France and America.

Now based in London, she is a lecturer for the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies (NADFAS), for the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) on their post-graduate Asian Art Course and for Madingley Hall (University of Cambridge). She has lectured all over Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe for organisations such as The British Museum, The Art Fund, The Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Asia House, The National Trust, The Wallace Collection, Farnham Castle Centre for International Briefing, Asian Civilisations Museum Singapore and universities, museums, colleges, schools, art institutions, literary societies and travel organisations including the Royal Geographical Society.

She has written a book on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang, and her latest one is on Cambodian dance, Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by Princess Buppha Devi, daughter of King Sihanouk.

She has led art tours to Southeast Asia and France for The Art Fund, The Royal Academy, The Scottish Royal Geographical Society, Asia House, Art Treasures Tours for Cox and Kings, Trustees of the Asian Art Museum San Francisco, Specialtours and British Museum Traveller.

Denise is a member of The Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom, Asia House, The Anglo-Indonesian Society, The Cambodian Society in the United Kingdom, La Societe des Amis de Champa and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

GILLIAN HOVELL

After graduating in Latin and Ancient History at Exeter University and a career in BBC Television, Gillian became deeply involved in archaeology. As an author, historian, archaeologist, tour guide and public speaker of considerable experience and astonishing range, the Reithian mantra of ‘educate, inform and entertain’ remains central to her work; she specialises in lively, passionate and engaging history that connects with our lives today, enabling audiences to relate to archaeology and to find depth and colour in our modern lives through the past’s continuing influence on us today.

She has lectured to audiences including the national media, Classical Associations, art galleries, museums and literary festivals and her books include Visiting the Past: finding and understanding Britain’s archaeology and Roman Britain, while Latin All Around Us: Why the Romans still matter today is due out in 2014 (CUP) and she is currently working on her next book on the History of the Mediterranean. She also shares her love of ancient history by teaching Latin and Roman History to adults and by continuing to work with community archaeology projects. She embraces all media for spreading the word about archaeology and was most recently heard on Radio 4.

To read more about Gillian's work, visit her blog: www.muddyarchaeologist.co.uk

DUNCAN MACMILLAN

Duncan Macmillan is an art historian and art critic. He is Professor Emeritus in the University of Edinburgh where, formerly, he both taught and ran the University's art gallery. He is also Art Critic of The Scotsman. He has written a number of books and a great many exhibition catalogues and and has won several prizes for his writing. His major work, Scottish Art 1460-1990, was, for instance, Scottish Book of the Year in 1991. It is now the standard text on the subject.

His experience as gallery director and art critic has also meant that alongside his writing and teaching as an art historian, he has had an extensive engagement with contemporary art and with living artists. Elizabeth Blackadder is the subject of one of a number of monographs he has written on contemporary artists. Interviewing the great Surrealist, Joan Miró, was, he feels, one of the most inspiring moments in his career, but he has also worked with and written about many other leading figures of our time in Britain, Europe and America, including the Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell and Sam Francis and their great champion, the American critic Clement Greenberg.

Dr THOMAS MANNACK

Dr. Mannack is Reader in Classical Iconography at the University of Oxford and an internationally known expert on Greek decorated pottery. He studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient History and European Archaeology in Kiel, Heidelberg and Oxford, and gained a first class doctorate at Kiel University. Dr. Mannack has taught Greek and Roman Art and Architecture in Oxford and at King's College, London, and regularly examined Finals papers in Greek, Egyptian, and Roman art for the University of Oxford.

He has published books and papers in English and German on Greek pottery, including the Greek and Cypriote pottery in Winchester College, Greek sculpture, and the reception of ancient art. He has been invited to present papers by many universities and academies including New York, Berlin, Tours, Brussels, Munich, Copenhagen, Vienna, Basel and Zurich.

ANDREW MOORE

Andrew won an industrial scholarship sponsored by Vickers Engineering to the University of Cambridge, where he gained an honours degree in Mathematics. From there his career took him into senior management with Marks & Spencer before being appointed Managing Director of one of Delia Smith’s companies. (Delia was of course one of the first British celebrity chefs). Andrew’s final senior position was as Chief Executive of Hymns Ancient and Modern, publishers of the eponymous hymnbooks and publisher of the hymnbook for the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The company also owns Church Times, the world’s largest selling Anglican newspaper.

He believes that whilst we rightly focus on the culture and art of ancient civilisations we should be aware that the mathematicians of their time developed concepts that provide the foundations of much of our understanding today. Married with two children, Andrew was once told that the two things he should never mention in a CV are religion and football. So - he is a Methodist with a keen interest in youth work and an active supporter of the English Championship side Brighton and Hove Albion.

Mr JAMES MORWOOD

James Morwood read Classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge's oldest college, before a year at Merton College, Oxford. For many years he was Head of Classics at Harrow School before moving on to teach Latin and Greek at Oxford University as a Fellow of Wadham College, where he was Dean and is now an Emeritus Fellow.

He has written and co-written many books concerning the ancient world, his main interest at the moment being Greek drama. At Harrow he led many expeditions to classical climes, he has been on a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, and he retains a deep love of Greek culture. Passionate about all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization, he has recently completed a book on the Emperor Hadrian.

Dr OSWYN MURRAY

Oswyn Murray is one of the leading historians of the ancient world; he has been lecturing on Mediterranean cruises since 1987, and has travelled widely in Russia and the Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea, and in modern Turkey. He was a Fellow of Balliol College Oxford for nearly forty years, and held the posts of Senior Tutor, Vice-Master and director of the Graduate Centre. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and an honorary member of the Royal Danish Academy and the Scuola Normale of Pisa; he has been a visiting lecturer in Paris, and at Bryn Mawr and MIT in the United States. He is the author of Early Greece and history editor of the best-selling Oxford History of the Classical World; his books have been translated into many leading European languages and into Chinese.

His current interests are in the ancient author Herodotus, the modern history of classical scholarship, and the history of pleasure. He is an expert on Greek drinking customs, and in his spare time makes his own cider.

Prof ILI NAGY

Ili Nagy, lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America, recently retired from her position as Professor of Art History at the University of Puget Sound. She specializes in the art and archaeology of Greece and Rome, early Christian and Byzantine Art, and Etruscan archaeology. Professor Nagy is a fellow and trustee of the American Academy in Rome, where she also held the position of Director of the Classical Summer School, and she has served as Professor-in-Charge at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome.

Professor Nagy has led previous tours to Egypt, Greece, and Roman Hungary and Austria; taught extensively on-site in Italy; and lectured to excellent reviews on several Mediterranean voyages since 2006, including several of these Aegean Sea cruises aboard Aegean Odyssey since fall 2010.

PATRICK NIXON

After studying classics and history at Cambridge Patrick spent most of his 37 year career as a diplomat either in the Middle East or dealing with its crises from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

He learned Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies outside Beirut before being posted to the British Embassy in Cairo in 1968. He was in the Embassies in Lima, Peru and Tripoli, Libya. From 1980 to 1983 he was Executive Director of British Information Services in New York. He was Ambassador to the State of Qatar (1987 -1990), High Commissioner to Zambia (1994 -1997) and finally Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1998 -2003). After retiring in 2003 he spent 5 months in 2004 in Basra as Regional Coordinator of the Coalition Provisional Authority for the 4 southern provinces of Iraq. Since retiring, Patrick has continued to travel and has maintained contact with the Middle East.

Prof JONATHAN PHILLIPS

Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of numerous books on the crusades, most recently Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades which was published by the Bodley Head to very positive reviews and selected as a ‘History Book of 2009’ by The Sunday Telegraph.

Phillips’ previous monograph The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom, was strongly praised by reviewers in Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, and his earlier The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Literary Prize 2005.

His current research interests centre upon the involvement of the Italian cities of Pisa, Genoa and Venice in the crusades. This will lead to a monograph, associated articles, as well as an introduction to a translation of the texts of Caffaro of Genoa (with Martin Hall).

Over the last eighteen months Phillips has given invited conference papers and lectures in Damascus, Istanbul, Malta, St Louis USA, Cardiff, Denmark. Professor Phillips has appeared in numerous television and radio programmes, most recently on Channel 4's 'Back from the Dead: Crusaders' and BBC Radio 4’s 'Start the Week' to discuss Holy Warriors. He is currently filming a major 6 part series 'The Road from Christ to Constantine' which he will present. He was the consultant and an interviewee in Channel 4’s programme on the Crusades in 2009, in Boris Johnson’s BBC2 programme 'After Rome' (2008), and the consultant and lead presenter for the History Channel’s 'Crescent and the Cross' (2005). A co-editor of the academic journal, Crusades, he also co-chairs the Crusades and Eastern Mediterranean seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London.

Photo © Erik van den Boom

ERNEST REA

Ernie Rea is a celebrated broadcaster who specialises on the history of religions and the way that faith impacts on the contemporary world. His regular radio programme, Beyond Belief, was awarded the prestigious Sony Gold Award for the best Speech Programme on British Radio. He worked for the BBC for 22 years in a variety of production and editorial roles. From 1989 -2001 he was Head of Religious Broadcasting for the BBC responsible for all their television and radio programmes nationally and locally. During this time, he spent much time in the United States, brokering co-production television deals with leading American broadcasters. He was closely involved in a variety of key national events, including the Funeral Service for Diana, Princess of Wales. He is in wide demand as a speaker at a wide variety of events, including international inter faith conferences, literary festivals, and academic symposia.

In 1997 he was personally awarded the Gold Medal of the International Council for Christians and Jews for his contribution to Inter Faith understanding. He has First Class Degrees in Theology and in History and Politics which helped fuel his passion for the study of world religions and the way in which they impact on the ancient and modern worlds. He was one time Visiting lecturer at the Department of Education at Manchester University.

NICHOLAS REED

Nicholas is an art historian and an archaeologist, graduating from Oxford and St Andrews in the 1970s. He is the author of five books about art, mainly on the French Impressionists, and has taken part in some thirty archaeological excavations, with fifteen articles published in journals on Roman history and archaeology. Nicholas has been a lecturer for the British National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies since 1991. He was invited by the Cultural and Heritage Commission of New Jersey to give some taster lectures and introduce the concept of NADFAS to the USA, and for this reason has lectured at several locations in New Jersey. He also gives talks on the American Impressionists, highlighting the French Impressionist scenes which Seward Johnson has reconstructed with life-size sculptures in full colour at Grounds for Sculpture near Princeton.

Nicholas’s most recent book is about his father’s part in running double-agents during WW2, working with an American intelligence group in liberated Europe, and tracking down Russian spies after the War, as an officer in MI5. Nicholas is fluent in French and German.

ANTHONY REID

Tony Reid has spent 40 years researching and writing Southeast Asian history, since his first degrees from New Zealand and PhD from Cambridge. Along the way he taught in universities in Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the U.S. His eight books and some 30 edited collections on the subject span the 15th to the 21st centuries. Many of them have been translated into Indonesian, and the 2-volume Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450 1680 (Yale University Press, 1988-93) also into Thai, Chinese and Japanese.

After an academic career mostly at the Australian National University, he was invited to become founding Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA (1999-2002), and subsequently of the Asia Research Institute at NUS, Singapore (2002-7). He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and the Australian equivalent, and was awarded the Fukuoka Prize in 2002, and the Association of Asian Studies (US), Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award in 2010. He has now returned to Canberra and its Australian National University, where he is completing a general history of Southeast Asia.

Dr. JOYCE SALISBURY

Joyce grew up in Brazil and Mexico, then moved to the States and obtained a PhD in Medieval History from Rutgers University in New Jersey. She was endlessly curious about what shapes people’s actions, and thus focused on the history of religion and aspects of social history, like the history of sexuality. Joyce was an award-winning teacher at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. When she retired, she could indulge her twin passions of writing books and giving lectures all over the world.

Joyce is an author of more than ten books, including a best-selling western civilization textbook, "The West in the World", and other non-fiction books on history and religion, including "The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages", "The Blood of Martyrs: Unintended Consequences of Ancient Violence" and the award-winning "Perpetua’s Passion: Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman". She is currently writing a biography of the Roman Empress Galla Placidia, weaving theology and daily life into the narrative.

Joyce has appeared on Public Television, Public Radio, and has circumnavigated the world twice teaching on Semester at Sea’s ship, the MV Explorer. She has also lectured on many commercial cruise ships.

Prof DAVID TOMPKINS

David Tompkins is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the European Studies Program at Carleton College, where he teaches a broad range of courses on European history. In his own research, he specializes in the culture and societies of Eastern Europe. David spent his undergraduate years at Rice University (with stints in London, Vienna, and the south of France), and did his graduate work at Columbia University.

He has lived for extended periods in East-Central Europe, including in Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, and Moscow, and travels there regularly. David has led two previous alumni tours to Eastern Europe, and looks forward to sharing this Black Sea voyage with our group next fall. Some of the topics he expects to address during the program include the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and emerging national states, the Russian Empire, and red communism around the Black Sea.

Prof WILLIAM G. WAGNER

A specialist on Imperial Russian and early Soviet history, Bill Wagner has been at Williams since 1980. He has written widely on pre-Revolutionary Russian law, religion, and women and currently is completing a book entitled Russian Sisters: Monasticism, Modernity, and the Nizhnii Novgorod Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, 1764-1935.

Prior to coming to Williams he was a Research Lecturer at Christ Church College, Oxford University, where he taught modern European and Russian history and Soviet politics. At Williams, in addition to survey courses on modern Europe and on Russia from the medieval period to the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has taught introductory and upper level seminars and tutorials on a range of topics in modern Russian and European history, including Russian cultural and intellectual history, religion in modern Russia, Russian and Soviet women, Stalin and the emergence of Stalinism, and Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has served as chair of the History Department, Director of the Williams College Oxford Program, Dean of the Faculty and Interim President.

Dr CANDACE WEDDLE

Candace Weddle is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Anderson University, South Carolina. She holds a Ph.D. in classical Art History from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, an M.A. in Medieval Art History from Tulane University in New Orleans, and a B.A. in Classics from Baylor University in her home state of Texas.

As an archaeologist, she has joined teams at several sites including Classe (the Roman Imperial fleet harbor outside of Ravenna), a Neolithic site in the Transylvanian region of Romania, and Princeton University’s Euchaita/Avkat project in north-central Turkey. She was also a member of the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s team excavating the “Temple of Domitian” in the well-known city of Ephesus in Turkey. The recipient of a Fulbright grant and a residential fellowship from the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, she spent a year in Istanbul conducting research and falling in love with that spectacular city.

She has traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East and has spoken on a variety of ancient and medieval topics at conferences and as an invited lecturer at universities in the U.S., the U.K., Turkey, and Indonesia. Her current primary research interest is the sensory experience of ancient life, especially the ways in which we can use archaeological and literary evidence to better understand the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and other sensations experienced by worshipers during ancient religious ceremonies.

Prof NANCY WILKIE

Nancy Wilkie, lecturer for Carleton College and the Archaeological Institute of America, is a distinguished archaeologist and professor who has lectured on numerous educational tours and cruises throughout the Mediterranean. Nancy is the William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology, and the Liberal Arts, and Co-Director of the Archaeology Concentration at Carleton College (Northfield, MN), where she has been on the faculty since 1974.

She is also an Honorary President of the Archaeological Institute of America and on the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Nancy began her archaeological career in 1968 when she joined a pioneering program of survey and excavation in the region of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Greece. Since then Nancy has worked on archaeological projects in Greece, Egypt, and Nepal, and has authored more than 30 articles and co-edited three books on archaeology.

GLORIA WYETH NEUMEIER

After Gloria Neumeier first taught in a dirt floored village school in Kenya in 1979, she and her late husband went on to some twenty years of teaching in Asia and Eastern Europe. Through assignments at universities and teachers' colleges and through agencies like the Soros Open Society program, they worked to understand and explain the divisions of the Cold War and Communist societies as well as the newly independent ones. China, Vietnam, Kosovo, Korea and Estonia were all fascinating laboratories of change in the late 20th and early 21st Century. In the last three years Gloria has worked with schools in Cambodia, Tamil Nadu, India and Burma/Myanmar, due to her everlasting interest in "nations in transition", and how globalization is affecting these SE Asian societies.

At home in Marin County, California, Ms. Neumeier teaches extension classes through the University of San Francisco, University of California at Berkeley and Sonoma State University. These are lectures about current global issues in Asia and the U.S. with a focus on how environment and demography can shape politics. She has a degree in International Relations from Barnard College, Columbia University and a graduate degree from Dominican University in California. She has lectured for many of the commercial cruise lines. emphasis on "nations in transition", how globalization is affecting these South East Asian societies