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Lecturer in Classical Studies

Employer
OPEN UNIVERSITY
Location
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire (GB)
Closing date
19 Jun 2022

Job Details

Job Description – Lecturer in Classical Studies

The Role

The person appointed will be a Central Academic member of staff based within the School of Arts and Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at The Open University, Milton Keynes. They will contribute to the undergraduate and postgraduate teaching of the School, supporting and leading teams responsible for the production, presentation, assessment and quality assurance of Classical Studies modules and interdisciplinary modules to which the School contributes. The successful candidate will also be an active researcher with a proven track record of or firm plans to produce original research in the field of Classical Studies commensurate with career stage. Other duties may include supporting the impact, knowledge exchange and outreach activities of the discipline.

Key responsibilities
The person appointed will be expected to contribute to the teaching and administration of the School, Faculty and University in the following ways:

Teaching

  • Contribute to teams producing, maintaining and updating Classical Studies modules and qualifications
  • Support student learning activity through the preparation of assessment materials and participation in Quality Assurance and examination processes

Research

  • Engage actively in research and produce high-quality research outputs, including work of international standard
  • Contribute to research activities and events in the School and Faculty

Impact

  • Actively develop and promote the impact of personal research and team projects and events promoting Classical Studies

Person Specification

Skills, experience and personal abilities/qualities

Essential

  • Experience of teaching at a range of undergraduate levels in Classical Studies
  • Experience of teaching at Master’s level
  • Experience of working with and/or producing distance-learning materials
  • An interdisciplinary approach in teaching, with a willingness to think across genre/subject boundaries
  • A profile of teaching excellence in Latin literature and language
  • the ability and readiness to contribute to the production, maintenance and updating of Classical Studies modules and/or the Faculty’s Level 1 Arts interdisciplinary curriculum
  • An understanding of the latest pedagogical techniques for teaching Classical Studies in HE, including the issues involved in supporting and delivering distance learning programmes
  • Research expertise which complements the research areas of current staff of Classical Studies at the OU. Preference may be given to candidates with expertise in Greek drama, Greek material culture or Latin literature. 
  • Potential for research excellence. This should demonstrate the ability to produce work of international or world-leading quality
  • An approach to the classical world that sees it in the round, particularly in terms of relations and intersections with other cultures
  • The ability to contribute to raising the profile of Classical Studies, e.g. through outreach and knowledge exchange activities
  • The ability to communicate ideas effectively, both orally and in writing, to a variety of audiences
  • Efficiency and organisation skills, including the ability to work to deadlines
  • A commitment to equal opportunities policies and practices
  • A commitment to Open University values
  • Evidence of being able to work in teams

Desirable

  • Experience of using and/or developing multimedia teaching materials
  • An FE/HE teaching qualification or Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
  • An interest in and/or experience of Digital Humanities approaches and research
  • Experience of additional research activity (e.g. research impact activities, bidding for funding) appropriate for career stage 

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
The Faculty is the largest and most diverse at The Open University, with some 50,000 students studying our modules with excellent completion rates and consistently outstanding student satisfaction ratings. Noted for the strength of our interdisciplinary approaches, our scholars of international standing teach and research a very wide range of topics and themes in specific subject areas, recognized as world class or internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014, and having a direct and profound influence on our undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.

The Faculty is organised into three Schools: 

  • School of Arts and Humanities
  • School of Social Sciences and Global Studies
  • School of Psychology & Counselling

Students are supported by three Student Support Teams. These teams offer specialist study support to students undertaking our qualifications across the University. Members of academic staff, including academics based in all four nations of the UK, form part of these teams in sustaining and improving student progression and retention.

The Faculty works closely with important organisations and institutions in the UK and other parts of the world in a range of validated partnerships and collaborations. Members of Faculty are engaged in world-class, agenda-setting research tackling the most difficult challenges facing us in the 21st Century, with work in numerous subject-based and interdisciplinary research groups and projects.

With c.1800 members of staff comprising academics, associate lecturers, support staff and full-time research students working across the locations of the University, combining originality and innovation in research and curriculum, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is a vibrant and exciting place to study and work.

To find out more about the Faculty’s teaching, learning and research, please visit: http://fass.open.ac.uk/    

The School of Arts & Humanities
The School consists of approximately 100 academics organised into five disciplines, namely: English & Creative Writing, Classical Studies, History, Art History, and Music. In addition to offering single honours qualifications at undergraduate and postgraduate level, the School is proud of its long history of interdisciplinary teaching, epitomised by its BA Arts & Humanities, and its interdisciplinary Level 1 (first year) modules. It also hosts several research centres, has recorded strong performances in REF2014, and actively supports the research and scholarship of its academic staff. To find out more visit the requisite discipline pages, which will be found on the School’s web page: School of Arts & Humanities | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (open.ac.uk

Department of Classical Studies 
Classical Studies has been one of the fastest-growing Classics groupings in the country. From a staff of three when it first became a separate department in 1993, we now have seventeen academic staff. 

Teaching 
We teach Classical Studies to over 1,300 students a year at undergraduate level. The BA (Hons) Classical Studies was introduced in 2014. At level 1, students study the interdisciplinary modules Discovering the Arts and Humanities (A111) and Cultures (A112). In A111, Classical Studies is represented by three areas of study: Cleopatra, ancient sculpture and receptions of Sophocles' Antigone. In A112, it is represented in case studies on Athens, Rome and Delphi as well as Homer, Virgil, Alexander the Great. At level 2, the department offers Exploring the Classical World (A229), a ‘gateway module’ designed to introduce students to key themes and questions in the study of both Greece and Rome, as well as introductory Latin (see below). At level 3, we offer Greek and Roman Myth: Histories and Stories (A350) and The Roman Empire (A340).

In addition, the department offers students the opportunity to study ancient languages. Classical Latin: the Language of Ancient Rome (A276) is a beginner-level Latin module, and from October 2021 students will be able to study introductory ancient Greek in the form of a dedicated OpenLearn module. Both of these combine the teaching of language and literature in translation. Our language modules have attracted large numbers of students, making the School a leading national provider of teaching in Latin and ancient Greek. 

The department also runs an MA programme in Classical Studies consisting of a postgraduate foundation module and a subject module on the ancient body ending in a dissertation which allows students to pursue their interests and facilitate the transition to PhD work. Unlike our undergraduate modules, MA modules are delivered entirely online. There are currently around 200 students taking the MA. 

Most of our modules are designed for a life of ten or twelve years, subject to regular review and adaptation. They carry either 60 or, in the case of the second part of the MA, 120 credit points. For some insight into what our module materials look like, please see our Taster Materials website: https://fass.open.ac.uk/classical-studies/tasters 

Classical Studies is also engaged in various outreach projects and work supporting classics teaching in schools. Please see our webpages for details: https://fass.open.ac.uk/classical-studies/schools-and-outreach  

Research 
The Classical Studies department has a strong research culture and seeks to support, maintain and develop the research and scholarship for which it is internationally renowned. We lead in developing interdisciplinary research in classical studies, especially in the fields of reception studies, digital classics and ancient material religion. We have an ambitious and supportive research environment involving both staff and postgraduate students, and we take part in many research and scholarship collaborations, both within the OU and beyond. 

Our research is focused in nine broad areas: material religion, digital classics, classical reception, material culture, Greek and Latin texts, the ancient body, language pedagogy, early Italy and sensory archaeology. We are home to the Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion, The Classical Studies Reception Network, The Votives Project and two open-access journals (Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies and New Voices in Classical Reception Studies), as well as the public-facing podcast site Classics Confidential; we are also part of the wider projects Hestia, Pelagios and Google Ancient Places. Over the next few years, we aim to develop all these areas to support both individual and collective research. Our research feeds into the taught curriculum, as well as into broader Faculty research themes in Arts, such as Cross-Cultural Identities; Digital Humanities; The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies; and Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GOTH). 

The department holds regular subject seminars and research conferences and aims to provide an ambitious, flexible and supportive environment for postgraduate study. Research student numbers and completions have increased since REF2014. At present there are 14 research students working in Classical Studies. Our membership of the OOC (Open-Oxford-Cambridge) Doctoral Training Partnership provides opportunities for postgraduate research and cross-institutional collaboration. 

For more information about Classical Studies at the OU, please visit our website at: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/classical-studies/index.shtml
 

Company

The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.8 million students and has almost 180,000 current students, including more than 15,000 overseas.
 
The OU was given an overall satisfaction rating of 90% in the latest National Student Survey, making it one of only three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to consistently score 90% or above every year since 2007. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses.
 
In the latest assessment exercise for university research (Research Excellence Framework), nearly three quarters (72%) of The Open University’s research was assessed as 4 or 3 star – the highest ratings available – and awarded to research that is world-leading or internationally excellent.  The Open University is unique among UK universities having both an access mission and demonstrating research excellence.
 
The OU has a 41 year partnership with the BBC and has moved from late-night lectures in the 1970s to co-producing prime-time series such as Frozen Planet, The Bottom Line, Britain’s Great War, I Bought a Rainforest and Business Boomers. In 2013/14 OU co-productions were viewed by 220m people in the UK which prompted more than 600k visits the OU’s free learning website, OpenLearn. (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/).
 
Regarded as Britain’s major e-learning institution, the OU is a world leader in developing technology to increase access to education on a global scale. Its vast ‘open content portfolio’ includes free study units on OpenLearn, which received 5.2million unique visitors in 2012/13, and materials on iTunes U, which has recorded more than 66 million downloads.
 

Company info
Telephone
+(44)01908 274066
Location
WALTON HALL
MILTON KEYNES
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

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