Dr Leo Kershaw

BA Literae Humaniores (Oxford); MSt Greek and/or Latin Languages and Literature (Oxford); DPhil Classical Languages and Literature (Oxford)

I hold a BA in Classics from Lady Margaret Hall (2020), an MSt in Greek and Latin Language and Literature from Balliol College (2021), and a DPhil in Classical Languages and Literature from Balliol (2024), which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Clarendon Fund, and Balliol College (2021-2024). My doctoral thesis investigated the reception of Euripides’ Medea in South Africa from the 19th to the 21st century. I have taught as a Language Instructor in Greek and Latin at Oxford’s Faculty of Classics and as a Lecturer in Greek language and literature at the University of Warwick (2024-2025), specialising in Greek theatre. I am currently Tower Junior Research Fellow in Greek Mythology at Christ Church College.

I teach or have taught tutorials for a variety of Classics literature papers, including Classical Reception, Greek Tragedy, Homer, Early Greek Hexameter Poetry, Greek Comedy, and Ovid, as well as the set texts for Mods and Prelims. I have also taught Greek and Latin language at all levels as part of the Faculty of Classics’ Language Teaching Team.

My research explores the performance reception of ancient Greek theatre in modern drama and poetry, alongside study of literature and languages of the ancient world. I am especially interested in the reception of Greek tragedy in the Global South and postcolonial cultural contexts, fascinated by the complexities, problems, and potentials of subversive, decolonial adaptations of Graeco-Roman material. 

My current project focuses on the reception of Greek tragedy and comedy in the South African Black Consciousness Movement of the 1960s to 1980s, which will be the first thorough investigation into the role of the classical mythology in the protest movement against apartheid. I research the translation, adaptation, and performance of Greek plays with a focus on their politicisation and the use of lamentation as mode of protest. This builds on my doctoral work which offered the first comprehensive analysis of the performance history of Euripides’ Medea on the South African stage from the 19th to the 21st century, which I am currently preparing for publication. 

In addition to global postcolonial engagements with Graeco-Roman literature and mythology, I have a particular interest in Gothic and Romantic receptions of the ancient world, especially in the writing of Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Byron and Keats, and the broader 19th-century fascination with classical antiquity. I work across classics, classical reception, theatre history, performance studies, and comparative literature and am interested in themes of power, gender, cultural clash and socio-political topicality. 

Kershaw, Leo. (2024). ‘‘The Academic in the Archive: Tracing the Workshopping Process of Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles’. Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South, University of Cape Town (digital exhibition). 

Kershaw, Leo. (2026, forthcoming). ‘Herakles outside the Western Canon.’ In Harrison, George, ed. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Hercules. New Jersey. 

Kershaw, Leo. (2026, forthcoming). ‘Radical performativity in Third World Bunfight’s MedEia’, Intersectional Medeas, ed. Zina Giannopoulou and Jesse Weiner.

Kershaw, Leo and Whittle, Daniel. (2026, forthcoming). ‘Excavating subterranean voices from the archive’, Archiving and Performing Antiquity: Reshaping the Canon, ed. Justine McConnell, Cécile Dudouyt and Sofia Frade.