Yara Hallenga

After an early interest in Classics led me to study both Latin and Ancient Greek throughout secondary school, I began a bachelor in Classical Studies with English at King’s College London in 2015. During this programme, I started to develop my interest in classical reception, and wrote my thesis on the reception of werewolves from antiquity in modern young adult fantasy novels. After receiving my BA in 2018, I ended up pursuing the research master Classics and Ancient Civilisations at the Vrije University in Amsterdam (2019-2022), which allowed me to specialise further in classical reception. I wrote my master thesis on the reception of the Roman emperor Claudius from Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ writings in the historical fiction novel I, Claudius, written by British author Robert Graves in 1934. 

After a gap year, during which I spent a month in Florence taking Italian classes, I broadened my horizons by taking a second masters, this time in Environmental Archaeology at Umeå University in Sweden (2023-2025). This gave me very new experiences, including doing fieldwork, lab work, quantitative analysis and more. I developed skills in using GIS programmes and mapping out archaeological sites and analysis results. 

All of this will serve me well in the DECADOCS project I am currently part of. My PhD thesis will be titled ‘Decadent Travellers and the Reception of Classical Antiquity in the Nineteenth Century’, and will focus on investigating the development of a decadent version of the Grand Tour in the late nineteenth century in regards to the Italian city of Naples and its surrounding region. The city’s classical associations with luxury, idleness, and suggestions of moral corruption will be traced through the centuries and considered in the context of decadent travellers and their writings. During the course of this investigation, I will produce a database and an online interactive map.