Indigenous Guides: Comparing Alexander and Columbus

Guest speaker Dylan James will explore what Christopher Columbus’ experiences in the Bahamas can teach us about Alexander the Great’s campaigns in India? This talk will consider the universal question of how conquerors and colonisers first engage with their new surroundings. How much do they listen to local people? How much do they ignore? We shall look at the two expeditions through the lens of indigenous guides, a relatively neglected topic in ancient Greek history. We shall explore whether and how modern historical settings — like Columbus’ voyages — can shed new light on ancient evidence.

NOTE - This event will now be held on Thursday 30 September.

Dylan James is an ancient Greek historian, working at the intersection of historiography, identity, geography, and cultural interaction. His research is currently focused on two major projects; a monograph on "Bilingual Individuals in Greco-Roman Historiography" based on his doctoral research; and a new project on the representation of indigenous guides in Greek and Roman historiography.

Dylan is currently Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Classical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2019-2021), and will soon start a new role as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Haifa Center for Mediterranean History at the University of Haifa, Israel. Before that he was Tytus Summer Residency Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, after completing a DPhil in Ancient History at the University of Oxford (2019). Dylan also holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Canterbury and was proud to have been a co-founder of Classoc while he studied at UC.

Tickets are free but seats are limited. Please register to attend.