
Dr Rachel Bryant Davies' research examines the reworking of classical mythology in tragedy and epic for new contexts and audiences, from opera to children’s games. She has focused in particular on the late antique religious adaptations of Greek Tragedy of Ezekiel’s Exagoge (GRBS, 2008) and Christus Patiens (JHS, 2017) and, more recently, on nineteenth-century British classical burlesques and toy theatres. She was a Doctoral Fellow of the Leverhulme-funded Cambridge Victorian Studies Group from 2007-2011 (supervisor: Professor Simon Goldhill), examining the manifold afterlives of the Trojan War myths in nineteenth-century Britain. Her resulting book, Troy, Carthage and the Victorians: the drama of classical ruins in the nineteenth-century imagination, was published by CUP in 2018. Her latest project, ‘Classics at Play: Greco-Roman antiquity in British children’s culture, 1750-1914’ traces how knowledge of the ancient world was repackaged beyond formalised educational settings, with an emphasis on unravelling how toys, games and leisure entertainments (such as theatrical souvenirs and playscripts) interacted with more overtly pedagogical paraphernalia.