Welcome to the new Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellows

Posted on: 17 November 2023 by Nick Jones in 2023 Posts

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and indeed the University of Liverpool, is pleased to welcome the latest cohort of early career fellows supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

The Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship scheme offers opportunities for outstanding early career researchers, with a research record but who have not yet held a full-time permanent academic post, to undertake a significant piece of publishable work.

The University, has an excellent track record of attracting outstanding ECRs through the scheme, and this year we are once again proud to welcome some new faces to the Faculty.

Meet the latest Leverhulme Trust ECR Fellows

Dr Anna Glew

I am originally from Ukraine, but have lived in West Yorkshire for many years, and so I have two ‘homes’.

My academic background is multidisciplinary, as I moved from languages and literature to peace and conflict studies, then to memory studies, and now to music.

My PhD thesis (University of Manchester) analysed the commemorative activity of ordinary people in Central Ukraine, focusing on memorials to the Euromaidan protests and the Russia-Ukraine war.

In my post-doctoral research, I will examine how popular music in Ukraine narrates the Russia-Ukraine war after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Dr Beatrice Pestarino

Beatrice Pestarino holds a PhD in Ancient Greek History from UCL (University College London) and is interested in the politico-administrative and economic systems of the Mediterranean city-states during the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods with a major focus on Cyprus, and on Ancient mobility investigated through travellers’ graffiti and marks.

She has been Postdoctoral fellow (2022-2024) at The Haifa Center for Mediterranean History (University of Haifa), where she investigated the connections between Cyprus and the Levant in the Archaic period (8th-6th cent. BC), and analysed the figures of the sukenim, SKNM, Levantine magistrates who ruled over a few Cypriot city-kingdoms.

At the University of Haifa, she has also been member of the cluster ‘First encounters’ (PI Gil Gambash, David Friesem), where she analysed the production of purple in the Eastern Mediterranean on the long durée, and is member of the Mitzpe Shivta Archaeological Project (PI Sina Lehnig, Guy Bar-Oz, Gil Gambash) where she edits and translates Greek inscriptions and graffiti found on the site, probably a Byzantine monastery (6th cent. AD).

She has been Fellow in Hellenic studies (2022-2023) at the Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS, Harvard University) where she studied the Cypriot early Hellenistic strategia and the role played by local Cypriot strategoi. In spring 2022, she has been visiting fellow of the Crews project ‘Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems’ (PI Pippa Steele) at the University of Cambridge (Faculty of Classics), where she studied the introduction of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus. She has regularly thought Classics in the London Summer School in Classics, organised by UCL (Department of Greek and Latin), and has delivered classes of Ancient Greek language at RHUL (Royal Holloway University of London) as visiting tutor.

Beatrice’s studies are mainly conducted through the analysis of inscriptions (on stones, ostraka, clay tablets, vessels) written in different languages and scripts such as alphabetic Greek, Cypriot-syllabic Greek, Eteocypriot, and Phoenician. Her first book Kypriōn Politeia, the political and administrative systems of the Classical Cypriot city-kingdoms (Brill, Leiden, 2022) - which won the Cyprus Review Junior Researcher Award 2023 in History and Political Science, and a book prize in Ancient History from the Instituto Italiano per la Storia Antica (Rome) - investigates the political and administrative systems of the Classical Cypriot city-kingdoms.

At the University of Liverpool, as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, her project ‘Rethinking regionalism and power in Hellenistic Cyprus’, will analyse long term developments of Archaic and Classical Cypriot institutions in the Hellenistic period, such as the role played by local elites in the administrations of cities and continuity in local administrative practices. In the early Hellenistic period, wars between Alexander’s successor kingdoms triggered deep political and socio-economic changes, and the traditional view is that this also happened in Cyprus. The project will however demonstrate that some institutions in Ptolemaic Cyprus retained the form of Classical city-kingdoms, with features reaching as far back as the Iron Age.

The project will also consider local administrative reactions to the imposition of Ptolemaic imperial rule. Its focus will extend beyond Cyprus in both time and place. It will transform our conception of hereditary power in the Ancient Mediterranean, developing an interdisciplinary approach that aims to compare the particular case of Cyprus to a wider Hellenistic context, opening avenues for collaboration with archaeologists, philologists, and historians who study related