The Australian Academy of the Humanities

Emeritus Professor Graeme Clarke

Emeritus Professor Graeme Clarke began his academic career at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, from where he graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts. The following year he received his MA with honours in Latin and Ancient Greek. During this time he won four separate university awards, including the John Mulgan Memorial Prize for Greek in 1954.

In October 1957 he took up residence at Balliol College in Oxford where he read Greats. In 1959 he graduated Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours and was awarded the College Prize. He received a Litt. D from the University of Melbourne for published work in 1976.

In 1957 and 1961-63 he was a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at the Australian National University. After this appointment he was made Senior Lecturer at the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia in Perth until 1966. Following this he became Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Studies at Monash University in Melbourne until 1968. This was followed by thirteen years as a Professor at the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

From 1982 until 1990 he was the Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Humanities research Centre at the ANU. He became Director of the HRC and remained in this position until 1995, and was Associate Director from 1995-1999.

From 2000-2006 he was Visiting Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and is currently Adjunct Professor at the School.

He has also been appointed to a great many other positions, including his election to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1975, of which he was a Council member (1976-77, 1985-94, 2006-present), Vice-President (1976-77, 1985-86), Treasurer (1986-94) and Honorary Secretary (2000-present). He has also been President of the Australian Society for Classical Studies (1976-78), a Council Member of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (since 1982). He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities in London (1989).

He has also held a great many other Fellowships, Chairs and other academic positions, including stints as Associate Dean, Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Since 1969 he has been receiving Australian Research Committee grants for his archaeological surveys in Syria and other projects.

He has a seemingly never-ending list of journal publications, beginning in 1964 with ‘The Destinatio Assemblies in AD 14' (Historia 13) and continuing in Historia, Latomus, Journal of Religious History, Harvard Theological Review, Classical Philology, Classical Review, Antichthon, Prudentia, Zeitschrift für Payrologie und Epigraphik, Abr-Nahrain, Mediterranean Archaeology, and Chronique archéologie en Syrie. Since 1994 he has been publishing his work on Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates in Northern Syria. He has also contributed to dictionaries, festschrifts, and edited collections. There is a long list of journal articles that are yet to appear.

His books include The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (1974), the four volumes of The Letters of St Cyprian (1984-1989), Rediscovering Hellenism (ed., 1989), Reading the Past in Late Antiquity (ed., with B. Croke, R. Mortley and A. Emmett Nobbs, 1989), Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean in Antiquity (1998), the two volumes of Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates (2002, 2006), and Excavating and Interpreting the Governor’s Palace, Acropolis, Jebel Khalid (2003). He also has several books in progress, including the third volume of Jebel Khalid.

Graeme has four children and five grandchildren.