Professor Rebecca Flemming's Inaugural Lecture

Key Details:

• Date: Wednesday 13 May 2026
• Time: 4-5pm, followed by a drinks reception from 5pm (close at 6pm)
• Location: Streatham Court LT B with the option to join remotely via MS Teams (the Teams link will be sent from the HASS Faculty team nearer to the time)

Title: 'Learning with Ancient Medicine’

In this lecture, Rebecca takes the opportunity to reflect on over thirty years of research in, about and around ancient Greek and Roman medicine. Tracing some of the scholarly developments over that time, thinking about the field now, and where it might go in the future. Rebecca focuses on three themes—the relations between classical medicine and classical studies, on questions around gender, sexuality and fertility, and on the ‘medical market-place’ in the ancient Mediterranean. In each case Rebecca considers both what the rich evidence—from surviving medical texts and archaeological materials—has to offer our understanding of the ancient world and what it can contribute to current debates and developments, now.

Meet Rebecca:
Professor Rebecca Flemming is the inaugural A.G. Leventis Chair in Ancient Greek Scientific and Technological Thought and the Director of the Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (CCEH) at the University of Exeter. She is an internationally renowned scholar of ancient medicine and science in its social and cultural context, with a particular focus on gender, sexuality, and reproduction—and has a leading role in a range of international collaborative research and publication projects. She is the PI on the interdisciplinary research project—'Pustules, Palaeogenetics and Pandemics from Galen to Rhazes: How to do the Early History of Smallpox and Measles'—funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award, and co-editor of the ancient volume in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Medicine.

For any enquiries on this event, please email [email protected].

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Host or Publisher Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences