President's Award for Outstanding Research

The President's Award for Outstanding Research recognizes researchers who have made outstanding contributions to their scholarly disciplines. Each award includes a $5,000 research grant.

Dr. Christopher Marshall, Classics

He may spend much of his time hiding behind the stage masks of the Greek and Latin theatre, but he cannot hide from this: Dr. Christopher Marshall is the recipient of the 2001 President's Award for Outstanding Research.

Dr. Marshall holds an undergraduate degree in archaeology and classics from McGill University and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. An associate professor after only three years at Memorial, Dr. Marshall is already a well-established leader in his field. His main speciality is the theatre of classical Greece and Rome, although his interests wander widely in all aspects of the classics. His numerous articles have been published in respected academic journals such as Classical Quarterly and Classical Journal. He has spoken at conferences around the world, including in Greece, South Africa and the United States. His scholarly standing was recognized in April of 2000 with a three-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant, which he is using to explore the stagecraft of the ancient Latin playwright Plautus.

"Classics is my passion and my drive," Dr. Marshall said. "Classics allows me to study the ancient world in all its aspects, use any methodology that I want, as long as it tells me something about the area that I am studying."

And it is with novel methodology that Dr. Marshall excels. Although he is fluent in the traditional tools of the classicist - the ancient Greek and Latin languages and the methods of philological critique - his scholarship derives much of its incisiveness and vigour from his activities as an actor and director, skills foreign to most classical scholars.

"I do see the plays I am involved with as an extension of my research because I'm interested in performance. So while the ability for me to put on a play on campus does not necessarily tell me what Euripides did or what Aristophanes did or what Plautus did, it does provide me with a laboratory that lets me conduct experiments about ancient stagecraft."

This approach has benefited the local public: Plautine plays on the steps of the QE II Library and a recent interpretation of a little-known play of Euripides in the Arts and Culture Centre have not only entertained them, but taught them too.

"I use my research as an extension of my teaching," he said. "I see my job fundamentally as a teacher. I'm teaching audiences with the plays, I teaching students in the classroom, and, through my publications, I am teaching my peers, in the same way that I learn from them when I read their articles."

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