Everybody seems to like the ancient world, and everybody seems to know things better than archaeologists, philologists, and historians. Ever since the early 1970s, there’s been an avalanche of insufficiently professional publications, and the rise of the internet has enabled the reintroduction of already refuted ideas. Measured by its ability to inform the general public of new insights, the study of the ancient world is a disappointment. Fortunately, there are lessons to be learned about proactive forms of science communication.
Jona Lendering (1964) studied history in Leiden and has been writing about archaeology, history, and ancient languages ever since. He published several books and built Livius.org, which was, in the days before the Wikipedia, the largest website on Rome, Greece, Persia, and other civilizations from the distant past. Today, he maintains a daily blog on ancient history, MainzerBeobachter.com.
Jan W. Bok (1970) is a faculty member of the Global College, IE University, Madrid. Before that, he taught Political Philosophy at the Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and World Language and Literature at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy. He is a proud graduate from different academic institutions, including the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (History and Arts, Philosophy) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Political Science) in Paris, France.
Presented by Roel Nieuwenkamp, Ambassador of the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands.
Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish
