Director's Welcome

Welcome to the Center for Hellenic Studies at UC – San Diego!

I am delighted to take up the position as Director for the Center for Hellenic Studies. During the 2020-21 and 2021-22 Academic Years, I will be working with our faculty, community members, and our students to provide programming of interest to all. Some of that programming with be remote and via zoom. Some, we hope, will be live when we return to campus. 

The Center for Hellenic Studies at UC San Diego offers a unique way to examine the history, culture and physical remains of over 3,000 years of Greek history.  The Center is a vibrant modern forum that fosters an intellectual community nationally and internationally, where local and international faculty, researchers, and students can collaborate and study the Hellenic world.  Our affiliated faculty members and graduate students are housed in the History, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, and Theater and Dance Departments, we have partnerships with institutions in Greece, Italy, Israel, China, and Canada, and we often host visiting scholars from other countries

The Center for Hellenic Studies is a core part of the university's mission: to provide a full spectrum of research, teaching, and outreach activities in Arts and Humanities, and the Social, Physical, and Applied Sciences. Our work at the Center embraces history and literature, digital scholarship, and the history of ideas and sciences in the Ancient and the modern Greek-speaking world. 

I'm honored to be part of this remarkable Center and to work with all of you as we explore the richness and diversity of the Hellenic world.

Seth Lerer,

Distinguished Professor of Literature

Former Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.