William Allan

McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature; Professor of Greek

I grew up in Bowhill, a former coal-mining village in Fife, Scotland. Thanks to the dedication and support of my teachers at Denend Primary School and Glenrothes High School, I became the first person in my family to attend University. I studied Classics and Gaelic at Edinburgh University and taught at Harvard University before coming to Univ. I have been a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust, and have also taught as a visiting Professor at Universities in Germany and New Zealand.

Teaching

I teach all options in Greek and Latin languages and literature.

Research

I’m particularly interested in the literature and intellectual history of archaic and classical Greece.

Selected Publications

• The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Euripides: The Children of Heracles (Aris and Phillips, 2001)
• Euripides: Medea (Duckworth, 2002)
• Euripides: Helen (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
• Homer: The Iliad (Bloomsbury, 2012)
• Classical Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• Homer: The Odyssey (Introduction and Notes, Oxford World’s Classics, 2016)
• Moralizing Strategies in Early Greek Poetry (Co-Editor, Mouseion LIX, University of Toronto Press, 2018)
• Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
• Euripides: Bacchae. Co-authored with L. A. Swift (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

And many articles and chapters on early Greek literature.