British School at Athens: Annual Course for Undergraduates (August – September 2025)
This three-week course began with synoptic lectures, offering students a basic understanding of the chronology and geography of Greek history, and introducing the key themes and skills of the course. Students were also offered a tour of the Fitch Laboratory and handling sessions in the BSA Museum and Archive. The course this year aimed to be truly diachronic, covering as evenly as possible sites and museums from the Bronze Age right through to Modern Greece.
After site- and museum-based lectures in Athens, Attica, and Central Greece, the course departed for a seven-day journey around the Peloponnese. This section of the course covered sites from prehistory (Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos), through the Classical and Hellenistic periods (Eleusis, Messene, Nemea), all the way through to the Late Byzantine (Mystras) and Venetian (Methone) periods. Additional highlights of this course included visits to the interiors of the Parthenon, the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai, on-going excavations at Messene, and the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Students were asked to write a journal, describing their experience visiting sites, including drawing sketches of artefacts and monuments and extensive descriptions, demonstrating also in a more creative way their deep understanding of the materials covered throughout the course; and tutors offered optional evening workshops on ‘additional’ course content, including sessions on digital humanities, and curatorial practice.
We were extremely excited to read that the student feedback questionnaires were unanimously positive, applauding in particular the great variety of topics covered, and the enthusiasm, knowledge and approachability of all course tutors. All students were given an anonymous feedback forms. Here is some feeback students noted:
“Everything was absolutely brilliant! I enjoyed all aspects of it and came away curious about certain topics I previously felt uninterested in. The lectures were all engaging and well organised, the on site tours felt logically structured and were incredible experiences. Overall it was a thrilling experience and left me with a taste for more!”
“On site explanations of the archaeology – being able to see and visualise the architecture as it was in various periods of antiquity went a long way in developing my understanding of a site and archaeological terms in general.”
“The site visits were fantastic! getting to actually go inside some of the temples that we wouldn’t usually be able to do was amazing. also, the lectures! they were all so enthusiastic about their topics and this really showed! I also loved the social aspects of the course, I made so many friends that I hope will last forever!”
- UG25 class at the Ancient Agora of Athens, with view of the Acropolis
- Georgios Mouratidis talking to students about the Pythian Games in Delphi
- The class visiting Thorikos (lecture by Eddie Jones)
