Current Projects

Kudos Grants in Aid

Kudos Grants in Aid are intended to assist Australian universities in securing or enhancing their Ancient Greek and/or Latin programmes.

Kudos/Sydney Latin Summer School Grant in Aid

Recently Awarded:

1. The Kudos/Sydney Latin Summer School Grant in Aid (2023) was awarded to the University of Tasmania for ‘Digital Design for learning Introductory Latin online’. The project plans to encourage and support Latin reading proficiency across a diverse student cohort by integrating written texts with rich visual media (video, illustration, dynamic graphics) and by combining reading activities with innovative exercises in aural comprehension. It will develop 1. Digital Latin Dialogues; 2. Interactive Seminar Videos; 3. Illustrated Vocabulary.

2. ACU is currently in the process of redesigning its Latin modules. As part of this process we are developing three new resources with the support of the Kudos Foundation: 1) a Latin cartoon involving Australian animal characters; 2) a Latin
reader, focused on Latin authors and texts from Late Antiquity through to the Late Medieval Period; and (3) a Latin grammar primer, also focused on later Latin use. The innovations that will be used in developing the Latin grammar primer include increased scaffolding, more varied and extensive examples of actual usage, and an increased focus on the application of grammatical knowledge to the reading and comprehension of Latin texts.

3. UNE proposes to develop two on-line courses in Latin and Greek. These MOOCS, while initially developed for students at UNE, would be open to students from any other institution in Australasia who would like an opportunity to build their Classical Languages skills over the summer period, which is traditionally a non-teaching one.

Kevin Lee Teaching Fellowship

The Kevin Lee Teaching Fellowship (in Latin, Greek, or both) is intended to assist Australian universities to secure or enhance their teaching of Ancient Greek and Latin, and to support research and scholarship in all aspects of Classical Studies.

Samuel Hendrick Wessels was the inaugural Kevin Lee Teaching Fellow at the University of Sydney.  
 
Samuel is deeply passionate about ancient history and languages. He has been teaching these topics for the last five years, primarily at Macquarie University, where he also undertook his undergraduate studies. During this time he received numerous awards. He specialises in ancient languages, including Latin, Greek, ancient Hebrew, and language generally in the ancient world. Samuel’s master’s thesis studied the language of Kingdoms, the Greek translation of the biblical books of Samuel and Kings, as evidence for the history of the Greek language. He was awarded the University medal for his thesis and is building on this work with his current PhD research.
 
Samuel believes that ancient languages are the foundation of ancient world studies. These languages are the primary means by which we connect with the stories, achievements, challenges, thoughts and daily life of ancient peoples. He aims to inspire his students with a passion for these fascinating languages and to equip them with the skills necessary to furthering our understanding of them and their place in human history.
 
Samuel’s work in the Kevin Lee fellowship will produce a new range of electronic resources for teaching and assessing undergraduate students. The work will help the University of Sydney meet the challenges of teaching ancient languages in the modern world in a way that engages and inspires a new generation of classicists and ancient historians.

Past Projects

Teaching Classical Languages Symposium

The Kudos Foundation contributed to the funding of the ‘Third Teaching Classical Languages Symposium 2022 – in memory of Emily Matters’ (convenors Dr Tamara Neal and Ms Elizabeth Stockdale) 12 August 2022

Click here for report

Lector in Ancient Greek at the University of Sydney

From 2017–2019, Tamara Neal was Lector in Ancient Greek at the University of Sydney, a position that was funded largely by the Kudos and the Aroney Foundations. Tamara has since been appointed as Lecturer in Ancient Greek at Sydney.

Tamara has been a passionate teacher of Greek and Latin, as well as other Classically-oriented subjects for over 15 years. She has developed her teaching expertise at a number of Australian universities, including the University of Melbourne, the University of Newcastle, and the University of New England, and, since 2010, the University of Sydney. For the best part of nearly two decades, Tamara has spent many hours thinking how best to enable language acquisition, and aims to provide a learning experience that is both enjoyable and efficient for her students. Her teaching philosophy centres on maximising learning skills and exposing students to original and authentic Greek as early as possible. The appointment to Greek lector was a great opportunity for Tamara to inspire students at a foundational level and to share this amazing language with as many people as possible. 

Tamara has a PhD in Classics from the University of Melbourne, and has published a book and articles on Homer. More recently, Tamara has been writing a foundational grammar book aimed at students of Greek and Latin.

Aristophanes’ Clouds

The Kudos Foundation part-sponsored a performance of Aristophanes’ Clouds in the original Greek in July 2017. The play was performed by students of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney to full-houses, both at the University and at the Maritime Museum, Sydney.

The Kevin Lee Lectureship

The Kudos Foundation supported a lectureship in Classics at the University of Sydney over the period 2004-2006, named the Kevin Lee Lectureship, in memory of Professor Kevin H. Lee, a great teacher and scholar, and a driving force in the establishment of the Kudos Foundation. The appointment of Dr Emma Gee as the first Kevin Lee Lecturer was a huge success. A graduate of Sydney University who returned to Australia in 2003 after an outstanding early career in the UK, she took her doctorate from Cambridge in 1998, and this won the prestigious Hare Prize for the best Ph.D. in its year, as well as a position at the University of Exeter. Her first book – Ovid, Aratus and Augustus – Astronomy in Ovid’s ‘Fasti’ – was very well received. She showed enormous energy and commitment in all aspects of her post as Kevin Lee Lecturer. A highly effective teacher of both Latin and Greek, she initiated several important access initiatives with NSW schools and maintained a high international profile in research. It is a testament to the success of the Kevin Lee Lectureship that Dr Gee went on to take up a permanent post at the University of St Andrews in the UK.

The Kevin Lee Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney
(Commenced 2009)

Kudos built on the success of the Kevin Lee Lectureship by supporting a rising young scholar, Dr Sebastiana Nervegna, as Kevin Lee Fellow.

From a stellar field, with applicants from all the major world centres of Classical scholarship, Dr Nervegna came to Australia with a fine record from the University of Bologna (Laurea in Lettere e Filosofia) and the University of Toronto (PhD) She wrote her thesis on the reception of the comic poet Menander in antiquity. This thesis is now an important book, Menander in Antiquity: the Contexts of Reception; she has also published a number of articles in the area of Greek and Roman drama and its reception. She is now an ARC Future Fellow at Monash University, working on Greek theatre in Italy.

How You Can Help

» How to make a donation

Significant donations can be found on the Significant Donations page of the Kudos website.