DrBen Brown

Project Opportunities

Title: Archaic and Classical Greece

Summary of opportunity:

Sydney born and bred, Dr Brown studied Ancient History at Macquarie University and Classical Greek at University of Sydney; he taught at Macquarie University, University of New South Wales and ACU before rejoining Classics at University of Sydney.

Opportunity synopsis:

Dr Brown's main research areas include the interpretation and contexts of Archaic Greek poetry, especially Homeric epic; the beginnings of Greek historiography and philosophy; Greece and Rome from the perspectives of comparative Indo-European language and culture; the socio-economic history of Archaic and Classical Greece, especially Archaic tyranny; Marxist, Critical Theory and sociological approaches to the Ancient World; “Big History”, with a focus on the ‘transition from Antiquity to Feudalism, 300-800 AD’.

Ben has supervised many Honours and Masters theses, with a special interest in those on Greek culture and history, and/or theses with a theoretical focus.

----------Current Research Projects----------

Dr Brown is currently working in four areas. The main project is a monograph on ‘Figures of Autonomy’ in Ancient Greece, studying forms and spaces of alienation in early Greek literature and history; the second is a general survey of land-tenure systems in the Graeco-Roman world, with a view to building typologies of surplus extraction from Solon to the late Empire; the third is a commentary on Book 23 of the Iliad; the last is a prolegomenon to a commentary on the fragments of Hekataios of Mlletus.