Publications

This page lists publications and conference papers submitted by members of CELPiE.

Creative and Curatorial Pedagogy: Teaching the International Innovatively
and Intimately
(Dr Laura Mills, School of International Relations –
2023 recipient of the British International Studies Association (BISA)
Award for Distinguished Excellence in Teaching International Studies)

This article presents the case of two IR modules on the global politics of everyday life – one undergraduate and one postgraduate – that incorporate ‘creative methodologies’ as integral elements to explore innovatively and intimately the international. You can read even more on this topic by Laura Mills in her article, Creative pedagogy: teaching the international innovatively and intimately.

Teaching Classics as an applied subject
(Alice König, School of Classics. Journal of Classics Teaching. 2024;25(49):8-16. doi:10.1017/S2058631023000727)

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of teaching Classics as an ‘applied’ subject. It outlines the development of a new module at the University of St Andrews which asks student teams to research and design a project that draws on ancient sources, practices or ideas to address a challenge in the 21st century, such as ‘fake news’, racism, or climate change. It distinguishes Applied Classics from Public Classics and Reception Studies, defining the former as ‘the purposeful application of carefully-chosen aspects of antiquity as a useful intervention in a contemporary challenge.’ It also underlines its value as a form of ‘Citizen Scholarship’, a branch of academia that builds bridges to activism and has tangible impacts, creating change (not just disseminating knowledge) in the wider world. The article considers the ethics of Applied Classics; the mentoring that students require, to work in novel ways and on topics well outside their comfort zones; and the assessment challenges that come with project-based learning. It reflects on the skills that students acquire from this kind of module (in leadership, collaboration, creative thinking, critical self-reflection and outcomes-focused thinking), on their sense of empowerment as they identify ways to translate their studies into socially impactful work, and on the contributions they can make to wider debates about the future of Classics as a discipline.

Teaching Eighteenth-century Classical Reception through University Museum Collections.
(Lenia Kouneni, Associate Dean of Education (Arts and Divinity), in Ruth Larsen, Alice Marples and Matthew McCormack (eds), Innovations in Teaching History: Eighteenth-Century Studies in Higher Education (London: University of London Press, 2024), chapter 7)

This chapter discusses the process, challenges and benefits of using physical materials from the collection of the Museum of the University of St Andrews to teach eighteenth century art and its engagement with archaeology and classical culture. The discussion presents the process of designing the module curriculum, the challenges it posed, the response of the students; it focuses in particular on the different ways museum objects were studied, displayed and utilised in order to enhance learning. The paper argues that ‘object-based learning’ (OBL) not only promotes active, open-ended, student-led, group learning, but it also has the ability to make a valid extension of collection utilisation that builds new value and purpose for the collection. Drawing in particular from recent developments and publications on the field of OBL, the discussion contributes an example of the implementation of this method of learning in the academic classroom. The paper also addresses the difficulties and possibilities of an object-based approach in the light of the current pandemic, discussing the use of digital surrogates through newly developed digital tools.