Yasmin Haskell

Though I trained as a Classicist most of my research and writing has been on the early modern period. I am a card-carrying ’Neo-Latinist’, meaning that I study Latin literature from and after the Italian Renaissance. After obtaining my doctorate from the University of Sydney (1996) I held a series of research fellowships in Cambridge (UK), before coming to Perth in 2003.

In 2017-18 I served for two years as Chair of Latin and Director of the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition at The University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Now back in Perth, I hope to help make UWA another such hub for innovative research and teaching in the Classical Tradition.

I am the Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism. My post was seed-funded by the Cassamarca Foundation (Treviso, Italy) along with those of 14 lecturers in Italian studies throughout Australia. These lectureships are overseen by the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies: http://acis.org.au/.

I was a Foundation Chief Investigator (later, Partner Investigator) in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions: Europe 1100-1800, and led research teams and projects working on 'Jesuit Emotions' and 'Passions for Learning': http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/research/researchers/yasmin-haskell.aspx.
(I was also the convenor of the 'Languages and Emotion' cluster in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/research/research-clusters/languages-and-emotion.aspx.)

My humanities research has connections to medicine and science. In 2016 I helped launch the Medical Humanities Research Network at UWA and since 2021 I am leading a humanities and creative arts team in the 'Living and Working in Space' node of UWA's newly launched International Space Centre, on 'Emotions in Space': https://internationalspacecentre.org/living.

I am working on several projects in Latin humanism, the Latin Enlightenment, on the literature of the Suppression of the Society of Jesus, and on ‘The Poetry of Nature and the Nature of Poetry in Comparative Perspective’ (the latter growing out of a conference I convened in Bristol in May 2018, with colleagues from Classics, Modern European Languages, Chinese, Linguistics, African Studies, and Environmental and Medical Humanities).

I'm currently researching classical language pedagogy in Europe, Asia and Australia with colleagues from Melbourne, China, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Germany and the UK.

I have been CI-1 on three ARC Discovery Projects: 'Mapping the Latin Enlightenment: Centres and Peripheries' (2009-2011); 'Psychosomatic Illness in Early Modern Italy: Lessons for Modern Psychiatric Theory and Practice' (2007-2009); and (current): 'The Ancient Today: Living Traditions of Classical Language Education'.

I've also been invited research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, Christ Church College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, Boston College, Massachussetts (forgone due to Covid-19), and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Chair of Latin, Department of Classics and Ancient History, and Director, Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol (2017-2018)

British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow (1999-2002)

Associates' Research Fellow (Newnham College, Cambridge) 1997-1999

Kathleen Hughes Research Fellow (Newnham College, Cambridge) 1995-1996

My next book, to be published by Bloomsbury, is provisionally entltled Jesuits at Play: Latin Poetry and Team Spirit in the Early Modern Society of Jesus.

In 2022-3 I have given/ will give invited lectures or plenary papers on my current research at the University of Sydney, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, University of Siena, University of Cambridge, Rome (international conference of the Academia Latinitati Fovendae), University of Bayreuth, Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, Bryn Mawr College, College of William and Mary, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Princeton University, Harvard University, Biblioteca Angelica (Rome), as well as the Craigie Memorial Lecture in Religion at the University of Calgary.

I currently teach across Latin/ neo-Latin and early modern studies. I welcome graduate students working in the areas of Latin and neo-Latin, classical reception, history of emotion and psychiatry, and Jesuit studies.