SCHOOL TEACHER FELLOWSHIP 2015 - 2016
The British School at Athens invites applications for a School Teacher Fellowship to be
held at the School in Athens or Knossos. The Fellowship will enable a teacher to pursue a
project designed to enhance their teaching (for example by researching a course,
preparing teaching materials, visiting sites or using the Library). The Fellowship may be
taken at any stage of the academic year 2015/16 by agreement with the School Director.
Accommodation is provided at the School for up to one week, plus the cost of travel to
Greece to a maximum of £300.
The School Teacher Fellow will be required to submit a report on his/her research to the
School’s Courses & Teaching Subcommittee.
Applicants should submit by e-mail to the School Administrator, Mrs Tania Gerousi
(school.administrator@bsa.ac.uk):
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a Curriculum Vitae
a short proposal (1,000 words maximum)
a reference letter from the applicant’s Head Teacher or Head of
Department as appropriate
The deadline for applications is Friday 29 January 2016.
THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS
The British School at Athens is an educational charity founded in 1886. It now forms part
of the British Academy's network of Sponsored Institutes and Societies (BASIS) which
sustains and supports British research overseas. The School exists to promote research of
international excellence in all disciplines pertaining to Greek lands, from fine art to
archaeometry, and in all periods to modern times. The School does this through:
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a programme of research undertaken both alone and in collaboration with UKbased and other overseas institutions;
an academic programme of seminars, lectures, and conferences;
our internationally renowned library;
the provision of services for members, including applications for study and
fieldwork permits; advice on the development of research programmes; access to
accommodation and facilities in Athens and Knossos; provision of online
services;
promoting the use of our archival, laboratory, and museum collections by the
scholarly community worldwide;
the provision of funding (including studentships and visiting fellowships) for
research in Greece, and to enable Greek researchers to visit the UK;
the provision of internships and training courses for undergraduates,
postgraduates, and schoolteachers.
Details of current School projects and the Strategic Plan for Research 2015-2020 may be
found at www.bsa.ac.uk.
Size and Scope
The School, which was founded in 1886, is an institute for advanced research and a
registered UK charity (no. 208673). It maintains a hostel offering affordable
accommodation to members, a world-class library, archive, laboratory for archaeological
science, and offices in Athens; a smaller hostel, library and museum for study purposes in
Knossos; and an office in London. It has five full-time academic staff, three research
fellows, three full-time and two part-time administrative/secretarial staff, three full-time
library/archival staff; and five full-time and two part-time domestic staff. The academic
staff, the research fellows, the IT Officer, and the Archivist are all actively engaged in
research, and all staff are encouraged to undertake professional development. In addition,
the School is supported by research-active non-executive staff in the UK, notably the
Chairman of Council (Professor Malcolm Schofield) and the honorary treasurer (Dr Carol
Bell). It offers two full studentships and several smaller bursaries for scholars every year,
and in various ways aids the research of around 2,000 scholars worldwide. Its average
annual turnover is approximately 1.3m pounds.
Staffing
The School has the following research staff, details of whose research interests and
publications are available at www.bsa.ac.uk:
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Full-time academic staff: Professor John Bennet, Director; Dr Chryssanthi
Papadopoulou, Assistant Director; Dr Evangelia Kiriatzi, Director of the Fitch
Laboratory; Dr Caroline Thurston, Knossos Curator; and Dr Noémi Muller,
Scientific Research Officer.
Full-time research fellows: Dr John Gait, Williams Fellow in ceramic petrology;
Dr. Eirini Avramopoulou, Leventis Fellow; and Dr Ozge Dilaver Kalkan, Balkan
Futures Fellow (co-appointment with the British Institute at Ankara).
Research-active staff with other primary responsibilities: Dr Jéan-Sebastien Gros,
IT officer; and Ms Amalia Kakissis, Archivist.
Infrastructure and Facilities
The School’s principal research infrastructure consists of its Library, its Museum, its
Fitch Laboratory and its facilities at Knossos.
The Library in Athens contains over 70,000 monographs, 1,000 periodical titles and
2,000 maps, and has space for 50 readers. It is staffed by two full-time librarians (Mrs
Penny Wilson-Zarganis and Ms Sandra Pepelasis) with the help of a student library
assistant. Members have 24-hour access. While providing a broad research-level
coverage of Greek history and archaeology of all periods, it specialises in the fields of
Aegean prehistory, ancient art and epigraphy, and Byzantine and modern Greek studies;
it also houses historical collections (such as George Finlay’s library) and a fine collection
of Greek and Balkan journals. The library is particularly rich in the area of Byzantine and
medieval material culture, extending into the principal contact cultures which shaped the
Byzantine world: in this area it complements the primarily literary and historical holdings
of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies. The School’s
collections are enhanced by those of the other foreign schools and institutes in Athens
with whom we have reciprocal arrangements giving access to a unique collection of more
than 450,000 titles on Hellenic Studies. We have particularly strong links with the
neighbouring Blegen and Gennadius libraries of the American School, with whom we
now share a common electronic library catalogue (AMBROSIA, American British
Online Search in Athens) available via www.bsa.ac.uk.
The Archive contains records of the School’s field projects going back to 1886;
material from the Byzantine Research Fund, ca. 1895-1936 (ca. 6,500 unique plans,
drawings and photographs of Byzantine architecture - some of buildings now destroyed);
the George Finlay papers, including journals from the Greek War of Independence; travel
notebooks (Gell, Stuart); ethnographic records and a large collection of glass negatives.
The archivist is responsible for access and conservation of the collection, and for projects
to conserve, electronically catalogue and digitise images from selected collections.
The Marc and Ismene Fitch Laboratory for Science-based Archaeology, founded in
1974, was the first of its kind in Greece. It specialises principally in the analysis of
inorganic materials (mainly pottery, as well as metals, wall paintings, and glass) and in
geophysical prospection, specialisms which are complementary to the work of the
neighbouring Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
It maintains facilities for petrological analysis of pottery (facilities for thin section
preparation and 2 research polarising microscopes coupled with a digital photography
system) and a WD-XRF instrument for chemical analysis. It houses comparative
collections of over 10,000 archaeological samples and over 3,000 geological samples. For
the needs of geophysical prospection it has a magnetometer and a resistivity meter. It also
maintains a reference collection of animal bones and seeds with ample space for strewing
archaeological material, and is able to offer annually a bursary on bioarchaeology and a
senior visiting fellowship. It is staffed by its director, scientific research officer, part-time
research and administrative assistant, the Williams Fellow, and project-related research
assistants. The Fitch plays a full part in the School’s postgraduate teaching activities,
currently staging an annual short course on ceramic petrology.
At Knossos, the BSA maintains a hostel, a small library (specialising in matters Cretan
and prehistoric) and the Stratigraphical Museum (a storeroom and study centre) with a
curator and a small part-time staff. The Stratigraphical Museum houses finds from
excavation in Knossos and elsewhere in Crete from the time of Arthur Evans (1905) to
the present, representing a vast scholarly resource of international significance. Proximity
to the School’s hostel allows scholars to study material intensively year round.
The School’s administrative and academic staff (principally the Administrator) makes
use of the School’s wide-ranging connections to help individual scholars with permit
applications. The research infrastructure is underpinned by the IT network, maintained by
the IT Officer. His role includes both the integration of IT into research strategies and
outcomes, and the development of web-based digital resources for researchers and the
wider community.
Dissemination and Publication of Research
The BSA publishes the results of its own research in all fields. The School’s Annual
(running since 1895 and now published by CUP) is devoted to publishing the work of the
School, which comprises articles written by its officers and other members, the work of
the Fitch, and preliminary reports on fieldwork. The School also compiles an annual
account of archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Archaeology in Greece, which is
published online (in collaboration with the École française d’Athènes) and in a print
digest in collaboration with the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies as part of
Archaeological Reports. Final reports on major excavation or survey projects usually
appear in the School’s Supplementary Volumes or Studies series, also used for publishing
the School’s conferences. The School recognises its role in conserving and facilitating
access to the archives (in all media) produced by major archaeological and nonarchaeological projects. To this end we are active in cataloguing and digitizing our
Archive, and in making it available via the School website.
Further information about the School can be found at www.bsa.ac.uk