We cordially invite you to the 2026 Annual Open Meeting of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens.

The Director, Professor Joanne Murphy, will present the work of the Institute 2025-2026, followed by a lecture by Professor Christine Morris & Professor Zuleika Rodgers (Trinity College Dublin), ‘From Ilium to Ireland with Schliemann and Lady Gregory: the journey of an object and its modern reception’.

The event will be hybrid at 19.00 pm (Greece time), 17.00 pm (Ireland time), 12.00 pm (Standard eastern time) The meeting will be held in at our premises (Agras 23, 11635 Athens), and will be followed by a reception.

·         To attend in person, please register by email at irishinstitutegr@gmail.com.

·         To attend online, please register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/0Fvk2XDfSn6sOHdlHG9Cpw

We look forward to welcoming you, and to the opportunity to meet with colleagues and friends at the beginning of the new academic year.

Abstract
In 2024, a decorated spindle whorl from Bronze Age Troy was gifted to the Weingreen Museum of Biblical Antiquities in Trinity College Dublin.  This simple clay object made its remarkable journey to Ireland via Athens where it was given by the excavator, Heinrich Schliemann to Lady Augusta Gregory (author and playwright, and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin with W.B. Yeats).
The lecture first presents the 'whorl from Troy' in terms of its object biography and its object journey. It is a material witness to a key element of ancient daily life, the spinning and weaving of wool to make clothes and textiles which is evidenced by the presence of thousands of spindle whorls from Troy, but it then acquires a unique and unusually well documented modern biography which brought it to Ireland.
We then turn to discuss how we are sharing and framing the Trojan whorl within the museum's archaeological teaching collections through the lens of object storytelling from different perspectives. To date, these include experimental and sensory archaeology and the co-creation of modern responses to the whorl and its Trojan world by Turkish artists and writers based in Ireland.

 Biographies

 Christine Morris is currently Chair of the Managing Committee of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies. She is the Andrew A David Professor in Greek Archaeology and History in the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin. She co-directs the Atsipadhes Archaeological Project and the East Cretan Peak Sanctuaries projects (with Alan Peatfield), is co-PI of the Many Lives of a Snake Goddess project. Since 2026 she has been a Trustee of the Chester Beatty Museum.

Zuleika Rodgers is the Curator of the Weingreen Museum. She is Associate Professor in Jewish Studies, Department of Near & Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin. A graduate of Trinity, Zuleika also studied at the École Biblique et Archéologique française de Jerusalem, where she also gained experience working with excavation material.

Christine and Zuleika are co-PIs on the Trinity College Dublin project,' Making the Past Visible: Stories from the Weingreen Museum collection'.