The Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity

The Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity is the youngest of the National Research Foundation's three historical institutes. It was founded in 1979 in order to foster systematic research on antiquity, especially in subjects and periods where scholarly neglect seemed to afford room for a Greek contribution on an international level.
Ιδρυτής και πρώτος διευθυντής του ήταν ο ακαδημαϊκός Μ.Β Σακελλαρίου (1979-1992).

The Centre's research projects today cover all aspects of Greek antiquity, from prehistory to the end of antiquity in the seventh century A.D. Special emphasis is placed on:

• the regeneration and renewal of the infrastructure of classical studies through the systematic collection and editing in computerised databases of source materials, including literary texts, but with particular attention to inscriptions and coins (including squeezes and casts made from them), photographs, plans, maps, aerial photographs and topographical diagrams;
• the publication of these materials in collections ('corpora');
• the production of monographs, articles and other studies based on the data collected;
• the training of young scholars (provision of scholarships and supervision of theses);
• the development of collaborative research programmes with Greek and foreign scholars, foundations and organizations, through scholarly exchanges and the organisation of conferences etc.

Study of the philological and epigraphical sources is supplemented through systematic surface surveys of both the urban and the rural areas of ancient cities.

The Centre has assigned high priority to areas on the geographical peripheries of Hellenism, and to relatively early and late periods which have in the past been neglected. Three geographically defined programmes have been established:

Current programmes
Νorthern Greece
Southern Greece
The Hellenic East

These programmes also cover various thematic projects on institutions, religion, historical geography, linguistics, prosopography and onomastics, numismatics etc., usually based on the Institute's own substantial archival holdings:

1. Publications archive covering the history and archaeology of ancient Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus and Thessaly, together with the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands in the Roman period;
2. Archive of the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Macedonia and Thrace;
3. Numismatic archive of Macedonia, Achaea and the Aegean islands;
4. Archive of the Greek and Latin inscriptions of southern Greece, principally the Peloponnese;
5. Archive of the archaeological sites of Achaea and Kea.

Studies based on these archives are normally published in the Centre's own series, ''ΜΕΛΕΤΗΜΑΤΑ'', which now contains 62 volumes.

The publications of the Researchers of the Institute can be found in the Helios Repository.

Other activities of the Centre include:

• the production of doctoral theses by young scholars, often with scholarships from the National Research Foundation;
• smaller thematic projects, which are communicated at conferences or published in international scholarly journals;
• the organisation of scholarly conferences and other meetings.

Much of the K.E.R.A.'s research is conducted in collaboration with Greek organisations such as the Department of Antiquities and Restorations of the Ministry of Culture or the Ionian University, and foreign organisations such as the foreign archaeological schools in Athens, the French CNRS or various European and American universities.

Some of the Institute's research projects have been incorporated in programmes funded by the European Union, and employ a small number of external collaborators, who in this way obtain some further training.

The European Union has also funded the progressive establishment of a computer network and the production of programmes which have facilitated the transfer of archives into electronic format, and the application of technology to the Institute's research and publishing activities.

The K.E.R.A. possesses a small specialist library which concentrates on areas covered by current research programmes.

The Centre's staff includes 19 researchers, a small number of scholarship-holders and scholarly collaborators, three research associates and two secretaries.

FUTURE PLANS

Among the Institute's future plans are:

1. The creation of an International Centre for Greek Studies in collaboration with the other two humanistic institutes at the National Research Foundation. The long-term purpose of such a Centre will be to reinforce cultural education and development, to help Greeks to understand their own tradition better, and to introduce that tradition to an international audience.
   
2. The development, by the three humanistic institutes at the National Research Foundation, of an umbrella-programme called 'Greek research without frontiers', which will supplement and extend the work of the International Centre for Greek studies. Its aim wil be to highlight and publicise the intellectual and artistic achievements of the Greek tradition, which flourished across an immense geograchical area, wherever Greeks lived and worked.
   

ACHIEVEMENTS

The KERA' s main achievement has been the production of work in classical studies by Greek scholars of international standing. 26 years of existence and 20 years of publishing activity have seen the publication, not only of hundreds of articles in international scholarly journals, but also of 47 monographs (40 of them in the Meletimata series) and three collections (corpora) of inscriptions, which have radically renewed our knowledge of ancient Greek history in the areas covered by the institute's programmes.
Of the 43 proposals submitted to the ''Competitiveness'' Programme, Action 3.3.1, ''Excellence in the research centres supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology'', and of the 27 proposals that reached the final stage, the KERA was marked 9.65 out of 10, and received the highest level of funding available (500.000 €), for the project ''Sources for ancient Greek history and culture''.

SERVICES PROVIDED

The KERA assists the wider, academic community through projects such as ARGOS (Archaeological Greek Online System). It also addresses the wider non-academic public through productions such as IMAGINA (Interactive..)