Naoíse Mac Sweeney

Mac Sweeney was born to Chinese and Irish parents in London.[2] She studied for an undergraduate degree in Classics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a Master’s at UCL in Ancient History.[1] She completed a PhD at Cambridge in 2007 with a thesis entitled 'Community Identity in Protohistoric Western Anatolia'.[3]

Following her PhD she spent time in policy reserch working on conflict and international development. From 2008 she held a Junior Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Classics and Fitzwilliam College at the University of Cambridge.[1] In 2011 she joined the University of Leicester as a Lecturer in Ancient History and Classical Archaeology. In 2020 she was appointed as a Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna.[1]

Her research focusses on aspects of cultural interaction and identity, with a focus on the ancient Greek world and Anatolia from the Iron Age to the Classical period.[4] Her 2018 book Troy: Myth, City, Icon explores the mythic, the archaeological, and cultural significance of Troy. It was short-listed for the 2019 PROSE awards in the category Archaeology & Ancient History.[5][6]

She was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2015.[7] In 2017, she held a visiting Research Fellowship at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies.[8] Mac Sweeney co-ordinates the international network 'Claiming the Classical', exploring the use of classical antiquity within contemporary political rhetoric.[9] Since 2019 she is the academic editor of Anatolian Studies, the Journal of the British Institute at Ankara,[1][10] and serves as a judge for the Runciman Award.[11] In 2020 Mac Sweeney received an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project MIGMAG – Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World.[12]