Alicia Matz

"Ovid", "Ovid's Metamorphoses: Creation, Content, Context"

Alicia Matz earned her BA from the University of Puget Sound in 2015, her MA from Rutgers University--New Brunswick in 2017, and her PhD from Boston University in 2024. Her dissertation examined the goddess Diana in Augustan poetry and material culture. While at Boston University, she also earned certificates in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Teaching Writing. Her research interests include interactions between poetry and material culture from the age of Augustus, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and classical reception, especially in sci-fi and fantasy media. She has published on rape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Roman religious thinking and its influence on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Pandora as an artificial intelligence hidden in Ovid’s Pygmalion myth, and fanfiction vs. the canon in Elodie Harper's The Wolf Den trilogy.

Aven McMaster

"Virgil's Aeneid: Creation, Content, Context"

Aven McMaster is Professor Emerita of the Ancient Studies department at Thorneloe University at Laurentian in Sudbury, Canada. Her scholarly interests are Latin poetry, gender and sexuality, public scholarship, and reception of the ancient world, especially in speculative fiction and media. She is a co-host of The Endless Knot Podcast, about etymology, history, and culture, and helps to produce videos for the educational video channel Alliterative on YouTube. Her PhD is in Classics, from the University of Toronto. She now lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Alexandra Morris

"Disability in Ancient Egypt"

Dr. Alexandra F. Morris is a disabled Egyptologist and disability activist tying the past to the present. She is currently a Lecturer (Education) in Ancient History at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research is on disability in ancient and Ptolemaic Egypt and Greece and the creation of inclusive museums. She has published this groundbreaking research in her first academic monograph and co-edited an edited volume. Both are on disability in ancient and Ptolemaic Egypt (2025 with Routledge), with another co-edited volume due to be released in March 2026. Alexandra is a Co-Founder of the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub, Co-President of CripAntiquity, serves on the Editorial Board for Asterion Hub, and Vice-President of the Disabled Action Research Kollective (D.A.R.K.). She is currently working on her fourth and fifth academic books; a biography and a sourcebook which both centre ancient disability. She has cerebral palsy and dyspraxia.

Ben Paites

"How Do Museums Work?" "Boudica"

Ben Paites is Senior Collections + Learning Curator at Colchester Museums. Although working across all collections, from art to Natural Science, his background is in Roman archaeology. Ben’s particular area of interest for research is the history of underrepresented communities.

Maciej Paprocki

"Hesiod's Theogony: Creation, Content, Context"

Maciej Paprocki (PhD) is an academic specialist at the University of Wrocław, Poland, and studies ancient Greek gods as depicted in epic poetry and modern media: their powers, limitations, fears, and wants. He has worked as an historical consultant, helping to develop Apotheon (2015), a video game set in the mythological storyworld of ancient Greece. He co-edited a volume on Achilles’ mother, Thetis (De Gruyter, 2023), and recently co-authored a paper on representations of divinity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His ongoing research focuses on god-killing weapons in Greek myth and its modern receptions, and on mythological video games.