Teaching Ancient Languages in Universities: Innovations in Module Design, Instruction and Assessment
This hybrid conference will take place on Friday, 18 September, 2026 at Senate House, London and online.
The conference will run from 10:30-16:00 in Room 261 of Senate House.
Aims of the conference:
The teaching of Latin and Greek is a common talking point in university classics departments. Language instructors are often grappling with pressures from university management to increase class sizes, cut classroom time, and increase student success, while the student body itself is constantly evolving in terms of its expectations, skills and needs. While these factors can produce challenges for instructors, they can also spawn successful experiments in how ancient language modules are designed, taught and assessed – innovations that are not always shared outside the institutions in which they take place.
This conference will provide an opportunity for colleagues in the UK and beyond to share and discuss some of the imaginative solutions they have adopted in their teaching of Greek and Latin. The focus is squarely on practical innovations – sometimes small-scale, sometimes larger in scope – that have addressed problems and/or led to improvements in students’ study skills, engagement, pass rates, and so on. Through a series of short papers and discussion, this conference is intended to inspire all of us as language instructors to reflect on our own practice, share thoughts and ideas, and to consider how we might best support our students to flourish in our individual teaching contexts.
The conference’s superstar speakers and papers include:
Bev Back (Leeds) Learn, Baby, Learn: Getting ready for Latin at Leeds
Maria Haley (Classics for All): Teaching to Test, Testing to Teach: Using assessment in the classroom
Steven Hunt (Cambridge): Just Try! Five very easy ways to get some spoken Latin into your usual class – and why it matters
Anna Judson and Justine Wolfenden (Durham) Applying Language Learning at Durham
Mair Lloyd (Open and Cambridge) and James Robson (Open) Latin and Greek in UK Universities: Everything to play for … but how do we win?
Mair Lloyd (Open and Cambridge) The Alure of ALIRA: Rethinking reading comprehension and assessment
Antony Makrinos (UCL) A Day at the Museum: Teaching beginners’ Greek with Object-Based Learning
Theodosios Polychronis (Aix-Marseille): Second Language Acquisition and Assessment of Language Command in the Case of Ancient Greek and Latin
April Pudsey (MMU) Latin Sources for Historians: Applied Latin teaching in a post-’92 context
Edward Ross and Jackie Baines (Reading) AI in the Ancient Language Classroom: Four years after ChatGPT
Registration details will be circulated on the classicists list shortly. The conference will be free to attend, both in person and online, and for in-person attendees, refreshments, including lunch, will be provided. While participants, or their institutions, are generally expected to cover the costs for travel and accommodation, a small number of bursaries will be available to contribute to travel and/or childcare costs.
Please address any questions to the conference organizer, Prof James Robson: james.robson@open.ac.uk
Note: this is not a Classical Association event – please contact the organisers directly with any enquiries.