From March 2026, the Institute has two new directors.
Dr Efi Spentzou is Reader in Classical Literature and Reception. She has authored three books and numerous articles on Latin poetry and its reception with a particular focus on love poetry, imperial epic, and mythological narratives. Her work is notable for its combination of literary and feminist theory through which she finds a new urgency in reading the Classics in our modern age. She has a sustained engagement with classical reception in European, and especially, Modern Greek literature, publishing on Helen of Troy; the engagements of Yiorgos Seferis and Yiannis Ritsos with the classical past, and 21st century anti-heroic readings of the foundational epics of Greek identity. For many years she has been co-Director of the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome. Currently she leads on Myth and Voice: immersive storytelling in community arts which supports collective and contemporary re-imaginings of classical myths in afterschool storytelling clubs, arts and community centres, and public festivals in the wider London and the South-East of England.
Efi writes: I see the Hellenic Institute as giving us the opportunity to foster Hellenic Studies and an engagement with Hellenic culture in academic and community settings. I hope we can support and build on the interests in contemporary Greek and Cypriot cultural life both in the academy and out there in the community. We want to reach out to, support and engage with the various Hellenic community groups and serve and attract those in the more recent waves of the Hellenic and Cypriot diasporas of which I am a part.
Richard Alston is Professor of Roman History. He has authored or edited fifteen books and fifty plus major articles on Roman history and its reception. His interest in the Greek world is reflected in books and articles on Egypt in the Roman period, three edited volumes on the Greek city in antiquity, and publications on the Classical tradition and the formation of the modern Greek state. In 2025, his long-term project on modern cities and the Classical tradition came to fruition with Classicism and the Construction of Capital Cities: London, Athens and Rome in the Nineteenth Century (London: Bloomsbury Academic), which features an extended discussion of the architectural and cultural development of Athens under the Bavarian monarchy. He has been Head of the Classics Department (twice), director of Royal Holloway’s Humanities and Arts Research Institute and has worked extensively on delivering the academic programme of the Institute of Classical Studies in London.
Richard writes: The Hellenic Institute has a been a fixture of my academic career at Royal Holloway and it is a great honour to be able to oversee the next stages of its development. We are gifted with its great tradition, particularly in Byzantine Studies. I am endlessly fascinated with the Greek cultural landscape and the layers of history, art and culture that form a living and powerful tradition. I hope we can develop the Institute to embrace the great diversity of Greek history and culture, from its deep history of four millennia ago to the issues of Greece, Cyprus and the diaspora in the present day.
