Alumni Profile: Dr Gillian Shepherd

Degree: Arts (Honours) 1988 Current Position: Lecturer in Classical Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham, UK I’d always been interested in archaeology probably through reading my father’s National Geographic magazines! I got my first real taste of it at Melbourne University. It wasn’t possible then to study archaeology per se (it is now) but I did as many archaeology-related courses as I could in Fine Arts and Classical Studies. I went on my first real dig at the University of Melbourne/ANU excavations at Jebel Khalid, a Hellenistic fortress on the Euphrates River in Syria. This was a fabulous experience – quite apart from the digging, living in a village in rural Syria was fascinating. In 1988 I won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, to do a PhD in classical archaeology. I applied through Melbourne University for the Alma Hansen Travelling Scholarship to help with my travel expenses to England - a long shot, I thought at the time, as it was stretching the rules of the scholarship. Somewhat to my surprise I was made the principal recipient so it also paid for me to go digging in Greece in the first year of my doctorate.

Cambridge is where my two main research interests began – ancient Greek colonisation and burial practices. Burial practices can reveal a lot about past societies, including social attitudes (such as the position of children – a lot of ancient cemeteries don’t have nearly enough children in them, given the high infant mortality which existed. What did they do with them?), trade and – if good enough skeletal evidence is preserved – past human health.

Just before finishing my doctorate, I won a junior research fellowship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, a three year position. Towards the end of my research fellowship I got a temporary lectureship at Royal Holloway, University of London; although I’d done some teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, this was my ‘baptism by fire’ – the first year of a lectureship is always incredibly tough – but it gave me invaluable experience.

In 1997 I took up a permanent lectureship in classical archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (IAA), University of Birmingham – so I am still based in the UK, but am always thinking about coming back to Melbourne! Britain offers great research facilities for me, especially the libraries and the fact that I can so easily travel to Italy and Greece, but I miss my family and the Australian weather and lifestyle a lot.

My research is based in Sicily, so I travel there quite frequently. I also seem to have acquired a sideline as a tour guide. A couple of times a year I act as a guide lecturer for a company called Andante Travels, which runs specialist archaeological tours. At the moment, I do a tour around Sicily and one based in the Bay of Naples (Pompeii, Herculaneum et cetera). I enjoy these a lot – lovely places and interesting people. I also act as a guide lecturer for the British School at Athens, an important research centre (especially for archaeology) which is also open to Australian researchers.

Another interest I’ve been able to develop recently is in museums. We have a small but good teaching collection at the IAA and I have coordinated the refurbishment of the IAA Museum, which is now nearly completed. This also led to my recent visit to Melbourne to look at the ways in which the University manages and develops its Cultural Collections and incorporates them into the university curriculum. I was very impressed with the work being done at Melbourne. It’s inspired me to put similar opportunities in place for Birmingham students.