Professor Katharine Earnshaw

My research centres around ancient poetry (in particular the authors Virgil, Lucan, Lucretius and Ausonius), environmental ethics and humanities, creative methodologies, history of thought, cognitive humanities, and how we learn about the world with and through texts. I am particularly interested in collaborative and interdisciplinary work with both academic and non-academic partners, agricultural ethics and instruction, didactic form (both ancient and modern - such as policy), and equity and justice in relation to climate change and health (e.g. eco-ableism). I enjoy topics and concepts in ancient didactic poetry that intersect with modern philosophy, physics, and geography. 

I collaborate with several artists, and am especially excited by exploring form as a consideration in research and in publishing in non-traditional formats. I am currently working with the artist Lauren Gault as the research collaborator on her forthcoming exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts opening October 2025, which draws on the Echo myth. You can see an earlier collaboration with Lauren and Atlas Arts in Skye here. I recently worked with the artist Laura Hopes on a collaborative artwork 'Not a (Field)Guide to the Future' which was included within the 'Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape' exhibition at the RAMM.

I am currently Co-I and Research Lead (for Theme 4: Build) in the new UKRI Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions, which is partnered with the UK Health Security Agency, Forest Research, the National Trust. I am also Co-I and Arts & Humanities lead on a large NERC grant looking at memory in trees and climate change within the Future of UK Treescapes programme, and a Co-I within the Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub, which is co-funded by UKRI, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (on behalf of England and Wales), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Scottish Government. I was recently PI on two NERC-led UKRI grants looking at present and future landscape decisions and agricultural ethics within the Landscape Decisions programme. I enjoy the pluralistic aspects of Classics, and often work with other disciplines and non-academic partners.

Biography:

Originally from Blackpool, I did my BA, MA and Ph.D. all at the University of Manchester. I then worked briefly as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds (2008-9), and as the Postgate Teaching Fellow at the University of Liverpool (2009-10). At Liverpool, a significant part of my job was also focussed on outreach and widening participation. I was a Fellow at St. John's College, Oxford (2010-16), where I was the organising tutor for Classics and Joint Schools. I started at the University of Exeter in 2016.

Research supervision:

I enjoy research supervision a great deal and am always happy to talk to potential candidates on supervision related to any aspects of my research. In particular, I am interested in:

- Greek and Latin poetry and prose, especially hexameter poetry (didactic, epic) and scientific/technical literature

- Creative, critical, and reflective approaches to Classics

- Environmentally informed topics and theoretical approaches, including climate justice

- Philosophical topics, including e.g. time, reality, consciousness, death, the afterlife

- Cognitive humanities

- Interdisciplinary work cutting across science/humanities

- Traditional (and non-traditional) philological commentaries

- Classical Reception in the long 18th century