Douglas Cairns

Douglas Cairns FBA , FRSE (* 1961 in Glasgow ) is a British Graecist .

Career

Cairns earned an MA (Honors) in Classics at the University of Glasgow in 1983 and was awarded a Ph.D. in Greek Philology there in 1987. PhD. From 1986 he was a lecturer in Greek at the University of St Andrews and from 1987 to 1988 he was a post-doctoral fellow of the Leverhulme Trust at the University of Göttingen . Years as a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago , New Zealand (1988–1992), as a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Leeds (1992–1999) and as a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Classics at the university Glasgow (1999-2004). On September 1, 2004, he was appointed Professor of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. There he was Head of Classics (2004-2005) and Head of School (2005-2008).

Fellowships

Cairns was a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Göttingen from 1993 to 1995, at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2011 and at the Technical University of Dresden in 2016 and had a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust from 2008 to 2011 and in 2012 until 2013 a Senior Research Fellowship of the ERC / Oxford University Project, The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions . For the past several years he has led an AHRC- funded project, A History of Distributed Cognition (2014-18), and the Leverhulme Trust International Research Network, Emotions through Time (2016-18); He currently heads the ERC AdG Project, Honor in Classical Greece (2018–2022).

Visiting professorships

In 2008, he was visiting professor at Kyoto University , Japan; 2007 as Peter A. Vlachos Lecturer in Classics at Colby College ; 2009 as Margaret Heavey Lecturer in Classics at the National University of Ireland, Galway ; 2009 as Platsis Symposiast at the University of Michigan ; 2012 as the George R. Langford Family Eminent Scholar Chair, Florida State University ; and 2017 to the University of Pisa ; 2013 and 2017 to the University of Bologna (2013, 2017), 2017 to the International Christian University, Tokyo; 2017 to Tokyo University ; and in 2018 to Fu Jen University , Taiwan.

Awards

• Member of the Academia Europaea since September 2013
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since February 2018
• Fellow of the British Academy since July 2018.
• Awarded the Anneliese Maier Research Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in January 2018

Functions

Cairns is, among other things, vice president of The Classical Association and chairman of the Classical Association Journals Board.

Research area

Cairns' research area is historical emotion research in relation to ancient Greece (epic poetry , tragedy and lyric poetry) and taking into account psychology , biology and behavioral studies . His dissertation on the Greek concept of shame (αἰδώς aidôs ) was fundamental in this sense.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs and Editions

• Sophocles, Antigone . Bloomsbury, London 2016.
• Bacchylides, Five Epinician Odes (3, 5, 9, 11 and 13) . Francis Cairns Publications Ltd, Cambridge 2010.
• Aidôs. The Psychology and Ethics of Honor and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1993.

Editorships

• (Ed.): A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity. Bloomsbury, London 2019.
• (Eds., With MJ Anderson and M. Sprevak): The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition , Volume 1: Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2018.
• (Ed., With Damien P. Nelis ): Seneca's Tragic Passions (= Maia 69.2). Rome, 2017.
• (Ed., With Margaret Alexiou ): Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and After. Edinburgh Leventis Studies 8, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2017.
• (Ed., With Damien P. Nelis): Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions. Steiner, Stuttgart 2017.
• (Ed., With Laurel Fulkerson): Emotions between Greece and Rome (= BICS Supplement 125). London, 2015.
• (Ed., With Ruth Scodel): Defining Greek Narrative (= Edinburgh Leventis Studies 7). Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2014.
• (Ed., With S. Blundell and NS Rabinowitz): Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece (= Helios 40.1-2). 2013.
• (Ed.): Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought. Classical Press of Wales, Swansea 2013.

Web links

• Personal page on the University of Edinburgh website
• Fellow of the British Academy
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation: Anneliese Maier Research Prize 2018 - The winners
• Technische Universität Dresden, September 12, 2018: Prof. Douglas Cairns: 250,000 euros for research into dealing with emotions in ancient texts
• Graduate College 1876 “Early Concepts of Man and Nature”: Mercator Fellow , January / February 2019