About us | The Many Faces of Artemis

Saskia Peels-Matthey - University of Groningen

Dr. Saskia Peels-Matthey is an assistant professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on ancient Greek religion, through projects that transcend narrow disciplinary boundaries, combining cognitive, linguistic, and historical approaches.

 

Her research within the program Anchoring Innovation, of which she is also a board member, also uses digital humanities methods and computational linguistic tools to advance the study of Ancient Greek and Latin literature and epigraphy. Saskia is organiser of the conference 'The Many Faces of Artemis'.

Michael Kerschner - Leiden University

Dr. Michael Kerschner is senior research associate at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and Byvanck Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at Leiden University. His research focusses on early Greek cult and sanctuaries, in particular on the Artemis sanctuaries of Ephesos, Miletos and Lousoi, on culture and identity of Ionia and Lydia as well as archaeometric analyses of pottery.

 

He is co-founder of “Hieron: Network for the Study of Greek Sanctuaries”. As co-organiser of the conference, Michael will present an anaylsis of archaeological and written evidence for the worship of Artemis Ephesia

Ivana Petrovic - University of Virginia

Ivana Petrovic is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, as well as chair of the Department of Classics there. Ivana's work focuses primarily on the interaction between classical texts and their historical, religious and social contexts. 

 

Among other publications, Ivana has authored a study of the cult of Artemis in Theocritus and Callimachus, Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp (Brill, 2007). She is furthermore editor of the journal Greece and Rome, and is currently conducting a large-scale diachronic study of purity and pollution in Greek religion, together with Andrej Petrovic. She is keynote speaker at The Many Faces of Artemis.

Alexander Heinemann - University of Tübingen

Dr. Alexander Heinemann lectures at the University of Tübingen and is curator of the Plaster Cast and Antiquities Collection at the Institute for Classical Archaeology within the university. His academic interests are Attic vase painting, visual culture of antiquity, representation culture in the Imperial period, and the topography of Imperial Rome.

 

Alexander is currently leading the project "Offene Stadt: Raumgestaltung und Sinnproduktion im Rom der flavischen Kaiser (69-96 n. Chr.)". He has studied an Attic skyphos containing depictions of Artemis, Kephalos, Bendis, and Themis, and will be presenting his findings at the conference.

Constanze Graml

Dr. Constanze Graml is Research Associate at the Institute for Classical Archaeology within the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Her research areas include the archaeology and history of Attica, ancient cult topography, and cults and cult practices of Ancient Greece.

 

Constanze is author of The Sanctuary of Artemis Soteira in the Kerameikos of Athens, which offers entirely new perspectives on a sanctuary within the Kerameikos of Athens that had previously been ascribed to the goddess Hecate. By critically reviewing previous excavtions and conducting new research of her own, Constanze is able to not only re-date the sanctuary to the Hellenistic period, but also reassign it to Artemis Soteira. At our conference, Constanze will provide a diachronic overview of the imagination of Artemis in Athens and Attica.

Floris van den Eijnde - Utrecht University

 

Dr. Floris van den Eijnde is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Utrecht University. He is also coordinator of the Research Master Ancient Medieval and Renaissance Studies there. His research centers around socio-cultural integration and interaction in the premodern Mediterranean.

 

Since 2019, Floris has been leader of the research group Sacrality and the Greek Polis, which studies the development of “sacredness” in sanctuaries during the formative and Classical stages of ancient Greek society. He will be presenting together with Artemisia Loesberg.

Guillaume Biard - University of Aix-Marseille

 

Guillaume Biard is Associate Professor in art history and archaeology at the University of Aix-Marseille. He is a specialist in Greek sculpture, and more particularly in honorary statues. Though the bulk of the portraits in the city of Thasos remain unpublished, Guillaume is working to correct this.

 

At The Many Faces of Artemis, Guillaume will be presenting on the cult of Artemis in Thasos: where and how did this cult operate, and what transformations did it go through over the centuries until Thasos's final collapse in the late imperial period? What can the present archaeological remains and ancient texts tell us about the role of Artemis in the local pantheon?

Alexander Mazarakis Ainian - University of Thessaly

Alexander Mazarakis Ainian is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Thessaly. There, he is the director of the Archaeological Laboratory, which he founded in 2000, as well as curator of the Departmental Archaeological Museum.

 

Alexander's main field of specialisation is the archaeology and architecture of Early Iron Age and Archaic Greece and Homeric Archaeology, as well as ancient Greek religion and sanctuaries of the Geometric through the Classical periods. In recent years, he has also specialized in underwater archaeology. With his research on the archaeology of Kythnos, Alexander has made significant contributions to the island and its local community. At the conference, Alexander will be discussing the sanctuaries of Artemis at Kythnos.

Karl Reber - University of Lausanne

Karl Reber is a retired Professor of Archaeology at the University of Lausanne. He was also director of the Swiss School of Archeology in Greece (ESAG). His research areas include domestic Greek architecture, religious architecture of the Geometric period, and the topography of the island of Euboea.

 

Karl has led several excavation projects in the city and in the territory of Eretria on the Island of Euboea. It was during this excavation that the sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia was discovered by the ESAG, in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities in Euboea. This was an extraordinary and highly publicized event, which Karl will be reflecting and elaborating upon during The Many Faces of Artemis.

Tamara Saggini - University of Lausanne

Tamara Saggini is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Swiss National Science Foundation) at the University of Lausanne, Institute of Archaeological and Classical Studies (IASA). Her research interests are Eretria, Archaic and Classical pottery, Greco-Persian Wars, pottery workshops production and diffusion networks, and materiality of cult practices. 

 

A member of the current research project on the Artemision of Amarynthos (Euboea) led by the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece (ESAG), Tamara is co-directing the ongoing excavation and is part of the team who will manage the publication of the temple and its finds. At the conference, Tamara, together with Samuel Verdan, will discuss the findings of the temple in relation to the many faces of Artemis and her dedicants. 

Samuel Verdan - University of Lausanne

Samuel Verdan is Research Officer at the University of Lausanne, Institute of Archaeological and Classical Studies (IASA). His research areas span Euboean Geometric pottery, Greece of the early Iron Age, and Greek sanctuaries and religious practices.

 

Samuel is one of the leaders of the research project on the Artemision of Amarynthos, which Tamara Saggini is also part of. This research project aims to study the origin and long-term evolution of the Artemision and its contribution to the making of Eretria’s sacred landscape. Together with Tamara, Samuel will be presenting the project at 'The Many Faces of Artemis'.

Oliver Pilz - German Archaeological Institute (Athens Dept.)

Prof. dr. Oliver Pilz is Second Director at the Athens Department of the German Archaeological Institute. Until recently, he was Professor at the Department of Archaeology within the School of Archaeology and Tourism at the University of Jordan, Amman. 

 

Oliver's research focus includes ancient sanctuaries and cults, iconography of Greek art, terracotta sculpture from the Geometric to the Hellenistic period, and Greek and Roman urbanism. He is currently working on the project "The Cults of Olympia: A Spatial Analysis", which takes a comprehensive look at Kultpluralität  in the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia. In Groningen, he will be presenting on the worship of Artemis in Elis and Triphylia.

 

Maria Spathi - Princeton University

Dr. Maria Spathi is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University. She specializes in material from ancient sacred sites while discussing their interpretation in relation to the archaeological context, specific rituals, and textual evidence.

 

Maria is a research associate of the systematic excavations of Ancient Messene in the Peloponnese, and has recently published a monograph on the sanctuary of Demeter there. The research topic of her fellowship is the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis in Messene, and her aim in the project is to uncover more about the character of this deity and the nature of the rituals within her worship. During this conference, Maria will be speaking on the various faces of Messenian Artemis.

Corinne Bonnet - University of Toulouse

Corinne Bonnet is Professor of Greek History at the University of Toulouse. Starting with her PhD on the cults and myths of Tyrian Heracles in the Mediterranean at the University of Liège, Bonnet is known for her work on ancient Mediterranean history and religion.

 

She was also the Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant project "Mapping Ancient Polytheisms: Cult Epithets as an Interface between Religious Systems and Human Agency", which was completed in 2022.  At the conference, Corinne will be speaking together with Sylvain Lebreton; they will be presenting us with their research about Artemis's many names and her situation in divine onomastic networks.

Sylvain Lebreton - University of Toulouse

Sylvain Lebreton is now assistant professor at the University of Toulouse. He completed his PhD on the cult-epithets of Zeus in Attica, and his research interests include historical, geographical, social and political implications of ancient Greek polytheism. He was also one of the main contributors of the BDEG (Greek Cult-Epithets Database) and of the "Mapping Ancient Polyheisms" (MAP) Database.


His work under Prof. Corinne Bonnet in the ERC MAP project as postdoctoral researcher focused on the structures and dynamics of ancient Greek polytheism through the study of divine epithets. He will be speaking together with Corinne at the conference.

 

Athanassia Zografou - University of Ioannina

Athanassia Zografou is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Ioannina. Among her areas of expertise are Ancient Greek religion and mythology, literature and ritual, and the reception of Homer in Late Antiquity.

 

Athanassia takes a special interest in the role of magic in Greek religion. she has researched sacrificial practice and divination, among other things, and several of her entries in conferences have focused on the Greek Magical Papyri. At our conference, she will be discussing the worship and social contexts of Artemis Hecate.

Theodora Jim - University of Nottingham

Theodora Jim is Associate Professor in Ancient Greek History at the University of Nottingham. Theodora's research focuses on Greek polytheism and comparative religions; she is the Principle Investigator of a Leverhulme Research Project on comparing Greek and Chinese polytheism. She is also interested in Greek Epigraphy, Greek culture, and anthropology.

 

Theodora takes an interest in the concept of soteria in Ancient Greece, and how it compares with that in Christianity. At the conference here in Groningen, Theodora's contribution will also take this angle, and she will be discussing the many faces of Artemis Soteira.

Nicholas Cahill - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nicholas Cahill is Professor of Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Holding his degrees at Michigan-Ann Arbor and California-Berkeley, his fields of expertise include but are not limited to Greek and Roman art and archaeology, Near Eastern (and especially Anatolian) art and archaeology, Greek city planning and social organization, and interrelations between Greece and the Near East.

 

Furthermore, Nicholas is Research Manager of the Harvard Art Museum and Director of the Sardis Expedition in Turkey, having conducted field work there as well as in England and Israel. At The Many Faces of Artemis, he will elaborate on his work at the sanctuary of Artemis in Sardis.

Cristoph Baier - Austrian Academy of Sciences

Christoph Baier is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include ancient urbanism, Hellenistic and Imperial domestic and palace architecture, and architectural decoration.

 

Christoph is currently leading the project The Urban Structure of Hellenistic Lousoi, which aims to answer essential questions about the expansion and structural development of Lousoi, a polis in the Peloponnesos that gained local recognition very early on for its worship of Artemis Hemera. At the conference, Christoph will be presenting together with Lilli Zabrana.

 

Lilli Zabrana - Austrian Academy of Sciences

Dr.-Ing. Lilli Zabrana is Senior Academy Scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She is also research assistant at the Austrian Archaeological Institute. Lilli's research interests include but are not limited to Roman sanctuaries in Asia Minor, Ethno-archaeology, and abandonment studies.

 

Lilli has been part of several research projects concerning the Artemision of Ephesus, one of which examined the sanctuary's cultic, social, and economic meanings. She furthermore led a project that identified a Roman building southwest of the temple as an Odeion. Together with Cristoph Baier, Lilli will be discussing Artemis sanctuaries as places of asylum.

Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge - Collège de France

Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge is a Professor at the Collège de France in Paris (chair: Religion, history, and society in the ancient Greek world) after having been a researcher at the F.N.R.S. (Belgium) and taught at the Université de Liège.

 

Vinciane specializes in ancient Greek religion, and has published extensively on this topic, in particular about Greek gods. Her dissertation concerned the cults of Aphrodite (L'Aphrodite grecque, 1994) and, with Gabriella Pironti, she elucidated the profile of the goddess Hera in a book published in French in 2016 and translated into English in 2022: The Hera of Zeus: intimate enemy, ultimate spouse (2022). During The Many Faces of Artemis, she will chair the roundtable discussion on how to study polytheism and Greek gods.