Skip to main content

Kathleen Riley

Former doctoral student
Image:
A photo of Kathleen Riley, smiling.

Dr Kathleen Riley is a writer and independent scholar, specializing in Classical Reception, biography, and the history of ideas. Born in Sydney, Australia, she received first-class honours in Latin and the University Convocation Medal from the University of Sydney. She completed a DPhil in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford where she later held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Her DPhil thesis, ‘Reasoning Madness: The Reception and Performance of Euripides’ Herakles’ (supervisor: Fiona Macintosh), was subsequently published as The Reception and Performance of Euripides’  Herakles: Reasoning Madness (OUP, 2008). She is currently at work on a new reception project, which explores ‘classical responses’ to the Spanish Civil War, as well as a biography of the Scottish ballet dancer Moira Shearer.  

Selected publications

Kathleen is author of Nigel Hawthorne on Stage (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2004) and lead editor of Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity (OUP, 2017). Her biography The Astaires: Fred and Adele (OUP, US, 2012) was included in both the Wall Street Journal’s Best Non-Fiction and the Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year. The screen rights to the book have since been purchased by Sony/Columbia Pictures for a feature film to be directed by Paul King. Kathleen’s most recent volume, Imagining Ithaca: Nostos and Nostalgia Since the Great War (OUP 2021), was long-listed for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award.