Dr Laura Jansen

I am Associate Professor (Reader) of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol, Director of the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition (IGRCT), and General Editor of the Bloomsbury monograph series Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing.

My research spans ancient Greek and Latin language, literature, and philosophy, alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century experimental writing, particularly from Argentina, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the United States, and Uruguay. Working from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, I explore the intersections between classical antiquity and modern literary cultures, tracing how ancient texts, ideas, and modes of thought continue to shape contemporary writing and intellectual life.

I am the author of Borges' Classics: Global Encounters with the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2018, funded by the Leverhulme Trust), and volume editor of Chimeric Ecologies: The Poetry of Phoebe Giannisi (Greek/ Modern Intersections, Michigan UP, submitted/in press), Susan Sontag's Tangential Classics (OUP, 2025), Anne Carson's Euripides (Classical Antiquity 42:2, 2023), Anne Carson/ Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2022) and The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers (Cambridge, 2014). I have also written a critical introduction to Anne Carson's translation of Sophokles. Antigone, published in Bloomsbury's Modern Classics series (2026).

My forthcoming monograph, Anne Carson and Classics: The Indisciplinary Impulse (Cambridge University Press), examines Anne Carson's engagement with classical antiquity as an indisciplinary practice that reimagines the boundaries between scholarship, translation, criticism, and art. This project has been supported by a University Research Fellowship at Bristol and a Research Fellowship at Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies.

Fellowships, Grants, and Distinctions

• Judge, Michael Marks Poetry Awards (2023-24)
• Research Fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University (2022-23)
• University Research Fellow, University of Bristol (2022-23)
• Visiting Professor, Stanford University (Fall 2022)
• British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant (2021-23)
• Visiting Research Grant, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University (2019)
• Visiting Research Grant, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University (2016)
• Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2015-16)
• Visiting Fellow, Princeton University (2015-16)

Teaching

I teach across Greek and Latin language, literature, and culture, and regularly convene research-led units for advanced undergraduates. Recent teaching includes:

Ancient Environmental Philosophy (Greek and Latin); Choral Song from Lyric to Comedy; Greek B: Sophocles' Antigone