Fiona McHardy

I am Head of Student Engagement in the School of Psychology, and Professor in the History team in the Research centre for Society, Culture, and Social Change. 

I came to Roehampton in 2003 as the first lecturer in Classics and was responsible for building up the BA Classical Civilisation programme in its early days. I became Programme Convener for BA Classical Civilisation in 2005 and Head of Classics in 2017, then Head of Classics and History in 2020, and Head of Learning and Teaching in 2022, before taking up my current role in 2025.

BA Honours Ancient and Modern Greek

MA Ancient Drama and Society

PhD on The Ideology of Revenge in Ancient Greek Culture

I am interested in the cultural history of violence in antiquity, especially in relationship to gender, status and age. My recent work has included publications on the understanding of violence across ancient cultures, the way decapitation and mutilation were understood in the Greek imagination, and fears about revenge and betrayal between military allies. I have recently edited A Cultural History of Violence in Antiquity for Bloomsbury, and am presently editing a volume on The Idea of the Ally in Ancient Greece.  I am also working on gendered violence in ancient Greek culture with a particular focus on neonaticide, infanticide, domestic violence and uxoricide.

My recent research has focused on ancient emotion studies, and in particular how emotions connected with violence are displayed in tragedy. Recent research has covered aspects of gender in combination with fear, grief, and jealousy.  I have a particular interest in revenge ethics, especially in Homeric epic, Greek tragedy and Attic oratory, as well as in modern Greek literature and folk poetry. I have a long-standing research interest in Greek tragic fragments, especially how violent and vengeful acts were portrayed in tragedies that are no longer extant, and have recently completed a chapter on Fear of Infants and Unborn Children in Euripidean fragmentary tragedy. I am presently working on a chapter on disenfrachised grief associated with mother's who lose their neonates in Euripides' plays.

I am currently working on a monograph about gender and violence in ancient Greece for Bloomsbury. My edited volume A Cultural History of Violence in Antiquity has recently been published.. I have co-edited a number of volumes including Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Literature with Lesel Dawson from the University of Bristol. With Mark Masterson I am series editor for Intersectionality in Antiquty for Edinburgh University Press, and with Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz I am co-editor of a series on Classical Pedagogy in the 21st Century for Routledge. For this series I co-edited Diversity and the Study of Antiquity in Higher Education with Daniel Libatique, published April 2023.

Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Fellow of SEDA

Steering Committee for Classics and Social Justice

Member of the Classical Association of England and Wales

Member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

Member of the Society for Classical Studies (N.America)

Member of the Women's Classical Caucus 

I teach the following modules:

- Introduction to Ancient History

- Violence and Law in Ancient Greece

- Tragedy: Classical, Shakespearean, Cinematic

- Final Year Project

I am currently supervising PhD theses on the following topics:

- A Study of Combat Trauma in 5th and Early 4th Century Greece

- The Female Trickster in Greek Mythology and Oratory

I have previously supervised PhD students working on:

- Animal Metaphors and the Depiction of Female Avengers in Attic Tragedy 

- Greek and Poetic Identity in the Works of C. P. Cavafy

- Paraphilias in Ancient Greece

- The idea of 'beautiful death' in Euripidean tragedy

- Nature imagery connected to rituals of birth, initiation, marriage and death in Apollonius Rhodius.

- The depiction of sexual violence against women in Attic oratory

- Intersectional Approaches to Classical Mythology