Across the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, King’s academics study cultural interactions across time and the transhistorical traditions that often frame, foster, and shape them.

Areas of particular strength include:

• classical reception and the classical tradition (focused on engagements with Greek and Roman antiquity)
• medievalism (focused on engagements with medieval culture/s)
• biblical reception/Christianity and the arts (focused on engagements with biblical and Jewish-Christian literature and culture)

presentPasts is a forum for exchange and collaboration in research and teaching dedicated to cross-temporal receptions, transhistorical traditions, and cultural interactions across time.

Its aim is to overcome the double siloization of such research into disciplines, on the one hand, and into discrete subfields, on the other. By enabling dialogue between researchers who share an interest in transhistorical reception studies but are working in different disciplines and/or on different source and target cultures, this network seeks to explore and discuss shared methodological challenges and theoretical questions, shared political and critical agendas, and shared opportunities for public engagement and knowledge dissemination.