You'll benefit from outstanding teaching from enthusiastic expert lecturers. In the 2020 NSS survey, 100% of our students said that our staff make the subject interesting!

Teaching and assessment

We tailor teaching to the subject matter, but modules are typically taught through a combination of lectures, which offer an overview of important themes, and seminars, at which you will be encouraged to present and debate your ideas.

Languages are taught in smaller classes with increased contact hours, and our tutors offer ‘language lab’ drop-in sessions for additional support. Students conducting research for second-year projects and final-year dissertations will also benefit from one-on-one supervision from our expert academics.

We assess your work using a variety of different methods, including examinations and written coursework, in-class tests and oral presentations, research essays and creative projects. Individual feedback from your tutors will help you to develop your writing in essays and to build your verbal-communication skills in presentations. You will develop your research skills and hone your ability to construct a compelling argument both verbally and in your writing.

Resources

As a classicist at Royal Holloway, you can access outstanding resources for learning and conducting research. Our archaeologists use cutting-edge specialist technology in their teaching and research, which you will have the opportunity to use. We also have access to archaeological archives, and links with local museums and commercial archaeology companies, through which you can gain curatorial experience or develop specialism in finds analysis. For example, our MA graduate, Tana Randle, undertook an internship with the Mary Rose Trust, focussing on XR (Extended Reality).

Classics beyond the campus

Our field-trips offer the chance to get hands-on with research-led teaching. In recent years, our students have enjoyed behind-the-scenes visits to the British Museum and Museum of London, a day off-campus in a professional kitchen cooking real Roman recipes, trips further afield to Pompeii, and the chance to gain voluntary experience on archaeological digs in Italy, Greece and Turkey.

University of London

Royal Holloway is part of the University of London, which is home to a world-class community of teaching and researching classical academics. As a student at Royal Holloway, you will have the option (subject to availability) to choose from a huge range of modules offered by other London colleges. This gives you unparalleled choice in your degree course and access to exceptional resources. Senate House, in central London, houses not only the Institute of Classical Studies library, but the University of London library, to which you will have access along with other college libraries in London.

Check out the video below to hear Emily, a third-year Classical Studies student, talk about her research dissertation on Tacitus' representation of the Germans in his Germania.

Classical Studies student, Hannah, sorting finds on a dig in Italy with Dr Erica Rowan