Douglas Cairns
Douglas Cairns works on ancient Greek society, ethics, and literature, especially the emotions. He has held the Chair of Classics in the University of Edinburgh since 2004, having previously taught in the Universities of St Andrews, Otago, Leeds, and Glasgow. He has held visiting positions in Italy (Pisa), Japan (Kyoto and Tokyo), Taiwan (Fu Jen) and the United States (as George R. Langford Family Eminent Scholar Chair, Florida State University). He was elected to Membership of Academia Europaea in 2013, to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018, and to a Fellowship of the British Academy in the same year. He served as Editor, Journal of Hellenic Studies (2016–20) and is currently Chair of the Classical Association UK (2020–25).
Recent collaborative research projects include ‘A History of Distributed Cognition’ (2014–17, Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK); ‘Emotions through Time: From Antiquity to Byzantium’ (2016–18, Leverhulme Trust); Honour in Classical Greece (2018–22, European Research Council). He was Mercator Fellow, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz (2018–19) and currently holds an Anneliese Maier-Forschungspreis, awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (2018–23, held at Technische Universität Dresden).
Select publications
A Cultural History of Emotions in Antiquity (edited, London, 2019)
Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity (edited with Miranda Anderson and Mark Sprevak, Edinburgh, 2018)
Seneca’s Tragic Passions (= Maia 69.2, edited with Damien Nelis, Rome, 2017)
Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions (HABES 59, edited with Damien Nelis, Stuttgart, 2017)
Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and After (edited with Margaret Alexiou, Edinburgh, 2017)
Sophocles: Antigone (London, 2016)
Emotions between Greece and Rome (BICS Supplement 125, edited with Laurel Fulkerson, London, 2015)
Defining Greek Narrative (edited with Ruth Scodel, Edinburgh, 2014)
Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought (edited, Swansea, 2013)
Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece (= Helios 40.1-2, 2013, edited with Sue Blundell and Nancy Rabinowitz)
Bacchylides: Five Epinician Odes (Cambridge, 2010)
Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and his Fellow Tragedians, in Honour of A. F. Garvie (edited with Vayos Liapis, Swansea, 2006)
Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds (edited, Swansea, 2005)
Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad (edited, Oxford, 2001)
Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1993)