The Department of Classics is delighted to welcome Dr Mengzhen Yue of the University of Shandong, China, to the Department. Mengzhen has been awarded TWO prestigious scholarships to work with Professor Lene Rubinstein.
A British Academy Visiting Fellowship will allow Mengzhen to work on the first Chinese translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric. The translator, Luo Niansheng, began his project and carried it on during and after the Cultural Revolution. He was thus reading and thinking about Aristotle and rhetoric during some of the most turbulent times in modern Chinese history. Her British Academy fellowship will be followed in 2024-2026 by her UKRI-funded project (£187,096) entitled, Constructing the 'Barbarian Other' in Attic Oratory of the Fourth Century B.C.E.
Lene Rubinstein writes, "It is a great privilege to be able to welcome Dr Mengzhen Yue to the Classics Department and as a member of our Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric. Her research will further strengthen the department's engagement with Global Classics, in particular the Chinese reception of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric."
Richard Alston (Research Lead) says, "we are so pleased that Mengzhen is joining our international research community. She will be bringing us her considerable knowledge and insights into both Chinese and Classical Greek intellectual history. The award of these prestigious grants is due recognition of Mengzhen and Lene's research excellence. The awards reflect the international importance of Royal Holloway as a research centre in the Classical world and its reception. It is particularly pleasing that the projects bring together the work of our two research centres, the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric and the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome."
