Mary Beard, one of the world’s foremost scholars of ancient Rome and a major intellectual figure in the modern study of classics, will speak at Georgetown’s Graduate Commencement ceremony on May 15.
Mary Beard (Courtesy of Robin Cormack)
A professor emerita of classics at the University of Cambridge, Beard has written and presented extensively about art, culture and power in the Roman Empire. Her acuity in dealing with the evidence of the ancient past is matched by her remarkable ability to consider and communicate the ways it informs our present.
These skills have endeared her to professional classics scholars and hobbyist historians alike. Beard is the author of numerous acclaimed books about Roman antiquity and a widely watched documentary series about everyday life in ancient Rome aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Beard is a recipient of one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious honors. In 2018, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Beard a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her services to the Study of Classical Civilisation.
“Apart from her many contributions to our understanding of ancient Rome, Mary Beard has productively challenged the way that students of the classical past understand their field,” said Alexander Sens, dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis Professor of Hellenic Studies. “Her work shows how valuable thinking about the ancient past can be for our understanding of our present world.”
About Mary Beard
Identified by the New Yorker as the field of classics’ “most famous practitioner,” Beard holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cambridge and taught at the university for nearly four decades before retiring in 2022.
She has authored several celebrated books, including “Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town,” which won the United Kingdom’s prestigious Wolfson History Prize in 2009, and “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.”
In the public forum, Beard is known as an erudite yet approachable scholar. The general public may be most familiar with Beard for her documentary appearances — including her own BBC series “Meet the Romans with Mary Beard” — her long-running blog “A Don’s Life” or her 2015 debate on Greece vs. Rome against Boris Johnson, then-Mayor of London and later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
In addition to her work at the University of Cambridge, Beard has also served as a Trustee of the British Museum, a professor of ancient literature at the Royal Academy of London, the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Learn more about Georgetown’s Commencement celebrations on the university’s Commencement website.