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Amy Smith

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Office

Room G37 Edith Morley Building

Areas of interest

Professor Smith is a classical archaeologist, with primary interests in Greek iconography and its many manifestations, especially in politics and religion, as well as ceramics. She is also a curator, with research interests the history of collections, digital museology and pedagogy.

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Smith is currently supervising Summer Courts and Seongmee Yoon in their PhD research on The Archaeology of Hidden Identity: The Case of a Female Burial from Lowbury Hill, in collaboration with Cranfield University & Oxfordshire Museums Service, funded by theSouth West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

She has supervised a wide range of postdoctoral and postgraduate students working on the material culture of Greek and Roman antiquity and their reception. Recent PhD theses she saw through to completion include Allan Hiscutt's The Miniature Reliefs of John Henning and Nathalie Choubineh's Female Solo Dance Images on Red-Figure Vases. She welcomes potential PhD students with interests in ancient material culture and its reception to contact her about supervision.

Research projects

Professor Smith collaborates with a wide range of scholars on topics ranging from Greek vases and their reception, e.g. as a contributor to C. Meyer and A. Petsalis-Diomidis' forthcomingPicturing the Greek Vase. She is now coauthoring a volume on women and festivals in Classical Athens, with Dr Katerina Volioti (University of Roehampton). 

As a member of the Winckelmann-Gesellschaft's International Committee, Professor Smith collaborated with Katherine Harloe and others to celebrate the work of J.J. Winckelmann through a series of lectures, workshops and other activities from 2017–2018 and published, in 2021, an edited volume,Under the Greek sky: New approaches to Winckelmann's reception and historiography, in Journal of Art Historiography 25 (https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/25-dec21/)

She is also a founding member of the Pottery in Context Research Network (ICS, London), the Classical Collections UK (specialist subject network), the International Network of Classical Archaeology University Collections, and a research associate of the Beazley Archive, University of Oxford.

Professor Smith received her degrees from Yale (PhD, MPhil, MA) and Dartmouth (BA), and was also educated at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA), the American Academy in Rome, and the American Numismatic Society.

She served as R.D. Milns Professor at the University of Queensland in August 2022. She has also taken University of Reading students on study tours of Athens (2019, 2017 and 2014) and Rome (2022, 2009) and served as the Gertrude Smith Professor at ASCSA and thus Director of one of its Summer Sessions in 2016. Professor Smith has excavated in Greece and in Spain. She also worked as an editor (Perseus Project; American Journal of Archaeology) and as curatorial assistant at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Background

Professor Smith received her degrees from Yale (PhD, MPhil, MA) and Dartmouth (BA), and was also educated at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA), the American Academy in Rome, and the American Numismatic Society.

She was a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University in 2017 and served ASCSA in 2016 as Gertrude Smith Visiting Professor, when she led ASCSA's Summer Session.

She has also taken University of Reading students on study tours of Athens (2019, 2017 and 2014) and Rome (2009). Professor Smith excavated in Greece – at the American School of Classical Studies' excavations in Athens' Agora and Corinth – and in Spain (Pollentia, Alcudia, Majorca).

She also worked as an editor (Perseus Project; American Journal of Archaeology) and as curatorial assistant at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Publications

  • Smith, A. (2016) Looking inside on the outside of a pot. In: Glazebrook, A. and Tsakirgis, B. , (eds.) Houses of Ill-Repute: The Archaeology of Houses, Taverns and Brothels. University of Pennsylvania Press , Pennsylvania, USA. pp. 143-168. ISBN: 9780812247565

  • Smith, A. (2015) Introduction. In: Pickup, S. , Bergeron, M. , Webb, J. , (eds.) Cypriote Antiquities in Reading. The Ure Museum at the University of Reading and the Reading Museum (Reading Borough Council). Corpus of Cypriote Antiquities , 30. Astrom , Uppsala. pp. vii. ISBN: 9789170812019

  • Smith, A. (2009) Theoria. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae , 1 pp. 475-476.
  • Smith, A. (2009) Personifications in art. In: Gagarin, . , (eds.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. , 5. Oxford University Press , Oxford. pp. 225-230. ISBN: 9780195170726