Edward Herring

Edward Herring joined the staff of NUI Galway in 2002, having previously worked at various institutions in London. In 2009 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer. He served two terms as Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies between 2009 and 2016. Previously he was the first Head of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and, before that, Acting Head of Classics. Throughout his time in university leadership roles, Edward continued to teach, supervise,and publish research in the field of Classical Archaeology. He studied for both his B.A. and Ph.D. at Queen Mary College, University of London. His primary research interest is in Iron Age and Classical South Italy, and in particular the relations between the Greek, Roman and Native (Italic) populations. He has a particular expertise in South Italian pottery, both Matt-Painted and Red-Figured. A practising archaeologist, he has worked extensively on excavations and field surveys in the Western Mediterranean, notably on an Iron Age to Roman Republican site at Botromagno, Gravina-di Puglia (BA), South Italy, on a multi-period field survey in the Po plain (Progetto Alto-Medio Polesine - Basso Veronese), and most recently on a multi-period survey based in northern Puglia, South Italy (UCL/NUIG Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project). He is Senior Research Fellow of the Accordia Research Institute, London, and was one of the editors of Accordia Research Papers, its journal, between 1990 and 2010. For many years, he served as the University of Galway's representative on the Council of the Classical Association of Ireland and sat on the editorial board of Classics Ireland, the Association's journal. Until 2014, he chaired the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Classical and Near Eastern Studies , and, subsequently, he served as the Vice-Chair of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Historical Studies. Edward was elected to the fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London in April 2006. In 2011, he held the A. D. Trendall Fellowship at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London. In 2022, he was appointed as the Area Editor for the Bronze  and Iron Ages for the Wiley Encyclopedia of Ancient History.

The history and archaeology of Southern Italy with special reference to the study of the relations between the Greek, Roman and Native communities, and to the problems of reconciling literary and ancient historical sources with the archaeological and iconographic record; South Italian Matt-Painted geometric pottery from the 11th to the 4th centuries BC; South Italian Red-Figured pottery. The Iron Age and Classical cultures of Italy, with special reference to state formation, ethnicity and identity, and the stimuli to these provided by culture contact (e.g. with Greek and Phoenician traders and colonists).