What is the format of the 4th International Classics Conference in Ghana?

The conference is an academic gathering focused on classical antiquity and its reception in contemporary global contexts.

4th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG)

Name: 4th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG)
Start: 2026-09-03T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-04T00:00:00Z
Location: Legon

Sep 3–4, 2026Legon, GhanaIn-person

Starts in 26 daysRegistration open

The 4th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG) is an academic gathering focused on the study of classical antiquity within a contemporary global context. Hosted in Legon, GHA, this iteration of the conference emphasizes the enduring relevance of classical studies and their reception in diverse cultural settings, particularly in Africa. It serves as a platform for scholars to explore how ancient texts, philosophies, and histories continue to shape modern thought and society. The conference aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, bringing together researchers from various fields to discuss the multifaceted impacts of classical traditions. It highlights the importance of examining these traditions through different lenses, including postcolonial perspectives and indigenous knowledge systems, thereby enriching the global understanding of classical reception.

Committees & topics

Topics
Cross-Cultural Reception and Reinterpretation of Antiquity · Collaboration, Partnership, and Knowledge Production in Classical Studies · Pedagogy, Curriculum Development, and Language Teaching · Digital Classics and Artificial Intelligence · Archives, Museums, Restitution, and Material Culture · Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Classical Studies · Gender, Sexuality, and Marginalized Voices in Antiquity · Migration, Mobility, and Cosmopolitanism in the Ancient World

Why it matters

This conference is significant because it challenges the traditional, often Eurocentric, understanding of classical studies by centering discussions in GHA. By hosting this event in Africa, the ICCG underscores the global reach and diverse interpretations of classical antiquity, moving beyond conventional academic boundaries. This approach allows for a more inclusive and nuanced exploration of how ancient civilizations are perceived and integrated into various cultural narratives.

The event provides a crucial forum for scholars to engage with the complexities of classical reception, particularly in regions where these traditions intersect with unique historical and social contexts. It encourages a re-evaluation of established classical canons and promotes the discovery of new perspectives, contributing to a more comprehensive and globally representative field of study. The focus on diverse interpretations is vital for understanding the broader implications of cultural heritage and its contemporary relevance.

How to prepare

For those engaging with the conference, understanding the concept of classical reception from multiple viewpoints is paramount. This involves not only familiarity with the classical texts themselves but also an appreciation for how these texts have been interpreted, adapted, and sometimes resisted across different cultures and historical periods. Participants should consider how their own cultural backgrounds influence their understanding of classical antiquity and be open to diverse interpretations.

Delegates should prepare by researching the specific academic traditions and scholarly contributions from African perspectives on classical studies. This will facilitate more meaningful engagement with the presentations and discussions, fostering a truly cross-cultural intellectual exchange. Familiarity with the historical and contemporary academic landscape of classical studies in GHA and other African nations will be particularly beneficial for contributing to the conference's goals.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 6 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ghana

Host nation, providing a crucial African perspective on classical reception.

Role in topic

As the host country, GHA offers a unique vantage point for examining the reception of classical antiquity outside of traditional European academic centers. The conference in Legon facilitates discussions on how classical traditions interact with local cultures and educational systems, promoting a decolonized approach to classical studies.

United Kingdom

Historical influence on classical studies, now engaging with broader global perspectives.

Role in topic

The United Kingdom has a long history of classical scholarship. Participation from GBR scholars can contribute to a dialogue that bridges traditional European classical studies with emerging global perspectives, fostering a more inclusive understanding of the field.

United States

Diverse academic traditions, contributing to global discourse on classical reception.

Role in topic

Scholars from the United States bring diverse academic traditions and methodologies to the study of classics. Their engagement at the conference can help broaden the scope of discussions, particularly regarding interdisciplinary approaches and the application of classical studies to contemporary issues.

Italy

Origin of Roman classical tradition, offering foundational insights.

Role in topic

As a primary source of classical Roman heritage, ITA's participation provides foundational insights into the origins and early reception of classical texts and ideas. Their contributions can enrich discussions on the historical evolution of classical studies.

Greece

Origin of Greek classical tradition, offering foundational insights.

Role in topic

Greece, as the birthplace of much of classical Greek thought, offers invaluable perspectives on the original contexts and meanings of classical works. Scholars from GRC can provide critical historical depth to conversations about classical reception.

South Africa

Significant African contributor to classical studies, offering regional perspectives.

Role in topic

South Africa has a robust tradition of classical scholarship within Africa. Its participation can highlight regional variations in classical reception and contribute to a broader African dialogue on the subject, complementing the host country's perspective.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Cross-Cultural Reception and Reinterpretation of Antiquity

The study of Greco-Roman antiquity has long been refracted through the cultures that encountered, translated, and reworked it. From the Arabic transmission of Aristotle and Galen in the medieval Islamic world, to the Renaissance recovery of classical texts in Europe, to the appropriation of classical motifs by colonial empires, antiquity has rarely belonged to a single tradition. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, scholars in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin America have increasingly challenged Eurocentric framings, foregrounding how their own intellectual traditions have engaged with, contested, or paralleled the classical past. In Ghana and across the African continent, scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Théophile Obenga, and more recently figures associated with the Society for Classical Studies' diversity initiatives have argued for situating ancient Mediterranean civilizations within wider African and Afro-Asiatic frameworks. Debates over Martin Bernal's Black Athena, the role of Egypt and Nubia in classical antiquity, and the legitimacy of comparative approaches to Akan, Yoruba, or Chinese antiquity continue to shape the field. The core dispute is whether 'Classics' remains a discipline rooted in Greece and Rome or expands into a comparative study of ancient world cultures, and how reception studies can make that pivot intellectually rigorous rather than merely additive.

Key players

Collaboration, Partnership, and Knowledge Production in Classical Studies

Knowledge production in Classics has historically flowed from a small number of European and North American institutions outward, with archaeological missions, textual editions, and canonical scholarship concentrated in a handful of universities, schools at Athens and Rome, and major presses. Postcolonial critiques from the late twentieth century onward have questioned the asymmetries embedded in these structures, particularly where African, Asian, and Latin American scholars have been positioned as informants or junior collaborators rather than equal partners in setting research agendas. Recent initiatives — including the Classics and Social Justice movement, partnerships between European institutes and African universities, and pan-African scholarly networks such as the Classical Association of South Africa and emerging Ghanaian and Nigerian programs — have sought to rebalance these relationships. Core disputes today concern co-authorship norms, equitable funding, where data and artifacts are housed, language of publication, and who controls the framing of research questions. The challenge is whether 'partnership' becomes substantive intellectual co-production or remains a rebranding of older extractive patterns.

Key players

Pedagogy, Curriculum Development, and Language Teaching

The teaching of Greek and Latin has been in flux for over a century, shifting from elite grammar-school drills to communicative methods, intensive summer programs, and online instruction. Curricular debates have intensified as enrollments in traditional Classics programs have declined in parts of Europe and North America, while interest has grown in regions such as West Africa, East Asia, and Latin America, often driven by theological, legal, or comparative-literary motivations. The 2021 decision by Princeton to remove the Greek and Latin requirement for its Classics majors, and parallel reforms elsewhere, crystallized arguments about access, rigor, and the role of ancient languages. In African contexts, pedagogy questions include how to integrate Classics with indigenous languages and histories, whether to teach Latin and Greek alongside Ge'ez, Coptic, or Arabic, and how to build sustainable secondary-school pipelines where none currently exist. The core dispute is how to broaden access without diluting linguistic competence, and how curricula can reflect a genuinely global ancient world rather than a narrowly Mediterranean canon.

Key players

Digital Classics and Artificial Intelligence

Digital Classics emerged in the late twentieth century with projects such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the Perseus Digital Library, and Pleiades, which transformed access to texts, lexica, and geographic data. Subsequent developments — digital epigraphy (EpiDoc), 3D scanning of sites and objects, and large-scale papyrological databases — democratized resources but also raised questions about sustainability, standards, and who benefits from digitization when infrastructure is unevenly distributed. The rise of machine learning and generative AI has accelerated these debates. Tools like Ithaca (DeepMind) for restoring damaged Greek inscriptions, OCR systems for ancient scripts, and large language models capable of drafting translations are reshaping research and teaching. Disputes center on accuracy and hallucination, the ethics of training models on contested or unprovenanced materials, equitable access for scholars in the Global South, and whether AI will deepen or narrow the pool of people doing classical work. For African and other under-resourced institutions, the question is whether digital and AI tools can leapfrog infrastructural gaps or whether they entrench existing asymmetries.

Key players

Archives, Museums, Restitution, and Material Culture

The contemporary debate over museums and restitution sits at the intersection of classical scholarship and colonial history. From the Parthenon Marbles removed by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century, to the Benin Bronzes looted in 1897, to the Ethiopian manuscripts taken from Maqdala in 1868, vast quantities of material culture sit in European and North American institutions whose collecting practices were shaped by empire. The 2018 Sarr-Savoy report commissioned by France marked a turning point, recommending the return of African heritage held in French public collections, and prompted policy shifts in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. For Classics, the issues extend beyond restitution to include the provenance of antiquities in major collections, the looting of sites in conflict zones such as Syria and Iraq, and the role of archives — papers of colonial-era archaeologists, photographic collections, and excavation records — in shaping what is known. Ghana's own engagement with the return of Asante regalia from the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in 2024 underscores how restitution debates intersect with classical and ancient-world collections. Disputes today concern the legal frameworks for return, the capacity and security of receiving institutions, and the meaning of 'universal museums' in a postcolonial era.

Key players

Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Classical Studies

Greco-Roman antiquity has been instrumentalized in modern racial discourse since at least the eighteenth century, when figures from Winckelmann onward fused aesthetic admiration of Greek sculpture with emerging racial hierarchies. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, classical imagery underwrote European colonialism and, in the United States, was deployed both by defenders of slavery and by abolitionists and Black classicists such as William Sanders Scarborough, the first African American member of the American Philological Association. The 1987 publication of Martin Bernal's Black Athena reignited debates over the Afro-Asiatic roots of Greek civilization, while more recent scholarship — by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Shelley Haley, and others — has examined how the discipline itself reproduces racial exclusion. Contemporary disputes range from how to teach ancient ethnographic categories (Greek/barbarian, Roman/Egyptian) without retrofitting modern racial logics, to whether and how to retain the term 'Classics' given its entanglement with white-supremacist appropriations. African and African-diasporic scholars are central to reframing these questions, asking how identity-based scholarship can be both rigorous and reparative.

Key players

Gender, Sexuality, and Marginalized Voices in Antiquity

Feminist classical scholarship since the 1970s — pioneered by figures such as Sarah Pomeroy, whose Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (1975) reframed the field — has transformed how the ancient world is read, recovering the lives of women, enslaved people, and others written out of canonical sources. Subsequent work on ancient sexuality, building on Foucault and developed by Kenneth Dover, David Halperin, and Amy Richlin, opened debates about whether modern categories of sexual identity map onto antiquity at all. Queer Classics, trans-historical readings, and disability studies have further expanded the field. Core disputes today include how to read silences in the source record, the ethics of representing enslaved voices, and how non-Western frameworks of gender and sexuality — including African and Indigenous ones — can illuminate the ancient Mediterranean. Pedagogical questions about teaching sexual violence in Ovid, slavery in Aristotle, or misogyny in Greek tragedy intersect with broader questions about whose experiences count as central to the study of antiquity.

Key players

Migration, Mobility, and Cosmopolitanism in the Ancient World

The ancient Mediterranean was a space of constant movement — Phoenician traders, Greek colonists, Roman soldiers, enslaved people transported across vast distances, philosophers traveling between Alexandria, Athens, and Rome, and pilgrims and merchants connecting the Sahara, the Nile, and the Indian Ocean. Recent scholarship, aided by isotope analysis, ancient DNA, and network theory, has reshaped understandings of just how mobile ancient populations were, challenging older assumptions of bounded ethnic communities. The work of scholars like Rebecca Futo Kennedy on ancient ethnicity and projects mapping diasporas across the Roman Empire have foregrounded these dynamics. These histories speak directly to contemporary debates about migration, citizenship, and cosmopolitanism. Ancient ideas — Stoic kosmopolitēs, Roman citizenship extensions culminating in the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 CE, and the integration of Africans, Syrians, and others into imperial elites — are invoked in modern political arguments. Disputes focus on whether ancient mobility offers genuine lessons for present-day migration policy, how to avoid anachronism, and how African mobility within and beyond the ancient Mediterranean (Garamantes, Aksum, trans-Saharan networks) reshapes the standard narrative.

Key players