The new academic year has begun at the Institute, and we welcome the Institute’s 2024-2025 Alföldi-Rosenbaum Fellow, Adam Wiznura, and Wilfrid Laurier University intern, Dante Campanella.

Adam Wiznura is a PhD student in Ancient History at the University of Groningen, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Onno van Nijf and Dr. Christina Williamson. His PhD project is entitled “Connecting the Greeks: Regional Festival Networks in Hellenistic and Roman Thessaly”.

Festivals of all types, including athletic and religious festivals, contribute to a sense of belonging and identity at a local level and are a way of creating connectivity at a regional level. This research posits that festivals and festival networks played a large part in the creation of a Thessalian regional identity. Festivals in Thessaly, during the Hellenistic and early Roman Periods, are of importance as they represent not only connectivity between peoples in Thessaly, but because of the erratic and uncertain nature of the period in Thessaly (invasions, forced population movements, increased foreign contacts, and political and religious reforms), the festivals are a good chronological indicator of how beliefs and customs were ever changing but could also stay the same. His research seeks to understand the roles of festivals in identity-formation processes during the Hellenistic period in Thessaly. It also attempts to answer the question of how festivals served to connect communities within the region as well as the wider Greek world, and the role of festivals in establishing a cohesive sense of regional identity.

Thanks to the Elisabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum Fellowship, Adam hopes to complete the writing of his dissertation and do supplementary research further analysing the athletic culture in Thessaly during the Roman period, to which his nine-month stay in Greece is instrumental. He will not only be able to have access to a wide variety of publications in the Canadian Institute in Greece and other foreign institutes but will also be able to interact with scholars who share common research interests. Additional research trips through Thessaly will also aid in the contextualisation of festivals within the region.

Dante Campanella recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology and Heritage Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University. Dante is now a graduate student at Queen’s University studying Classical Archaeology with a special interest in the Eastern Mediterranean.

During his undergrad Dante participated in field training in Madaba, Jordan where he gained a better understanding of archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. Dante wishes to investigate further into the relationships between different peoples regarding trade and the economy in the classical period.

Exploring Greece will allow Dante to better understand the relationships between people and its impact on trade and the economy by looking at sites and artifacts which show this relationship.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director