Introductions

As is the case in every forum I've ever wandered into, this forum needs a spot for us to introduce ourselves when we arrive. So, who are you? I'm Lauren Murphy, PhD candidate at La Trobe University in Melbourne. I work sort-of in reception studies with some crossover with museum studies and the history of collections, but the field of connoisseurship and attribution is pretty fascinating to me too. I'm happy to argue the importance of the individual artist and their body of work with people who think that the context of an object is the only thing that matters. For my thesis, I am researching early collections of Greek and South Italian painted vases that predate the publication of Sir William Hamilton's first collection. I had a lovely time in Europe undertaking research late last year and I hope to get back there when travel is possible once more. Apart from my work with vases, I like to wander off and do research in other areas of Classics and Ancient History where I am absolutely encroaching on the territory of people who actually know what they're doing. I have an article in the inaugural issue of New Classicists where I pretend to be a scholar of Roman and Alexandrian history, because why not? I also paint and draw a lot, that was my first and doomed career. I didn't really embrace this field until I returned to do another degree in my thirties and was won over during a vase handling session in my first semester. That class was just meant to be a filler in my program so I had to overhaul everything to go chasing a new passion. Luckily for me, I'm pretty good at this stuff so I'm still playing with vases whenever possible. One thing which I don't seem to have in common with many classicists or historians is that I have hardly any Latin or Ancient Greek. Basically, my uni only offered the first year of Latin, which I took, and I can read the Greek inscriptions of vases (usually) because they tend to be pretty formulaic. I can muddle my way through Latin texts but it's pretty slow going, so I am lucky that a lot of my work involves looking at pretty pictures. You can find me on twitter as @ouroboros81 Sorry for the waffling, but someone needs to kick this off and without the model of an earlier post, well, I ramble on a lot. Anyway, it's nearly 5am here in Oz, but hopefully when I wake up I can meet some new people. Goodnight/morning.