Further Information

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Full-time, fixed term position (5 years)

Further details of the Post of Assistant Director, British School at Athens

The British School at Athens (an institute for advanced research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, located in Greece) seeks a full-time Assistant Director to take charge of its teaching programme and communications, conduct original research, contribute to its fundraising programme, and oversee the security and maintenance of its Athens premises. The appointment is for a fixed term of 5 years. You will have completed a doctorate and have defined an original research project which can be completed while in post in Athens. Residence in Athens is a requirement (rent-free housing is provided on-site).

The Assistant Director is the BSA’s second-ranking officer who may officially represent the institution at the request of the Director, and who takes charge of the daily running of the School when the Director is absent from Greece, working closely with colleagues from other Greek and foreign institutions. You will be capable of combining academic research and managerial tasks in a flexible manner. The duties of this post demand that you be able to communicate effectively in Greek, or demonstrate how you will acquire this level of command before taking up the post.

You will be required to:

• conduct your own programme of research and publication;
• take overall charge of the BSA’s teaching programme at all levels (undergraduate, postgraduate, professional development, interns);
• take overall charge of the BSA’s communications with the academic community and with alumni, and liaise with BSA members to ensure the smooth running of the academic life of the BSA;
• serve as Curator of the BSA Museum;
• oversee the security and maintenance of the Athens premises;
• contribute to the BSA’s fundraising programme, both in Greece and elsewhere;
• assist the Director in the preparation of Archaeology in Greece Online;
• perform such other duties as the Director shall from time to time request.

The Assistant Director is expected to be available in the Hostel for at least the hours 0900-1300 from Monday to Friday, and may not be absent from Athens unless the Director or another person authorised by Council is in residence.

This is a fixed term appointment because the full-time office of Assistant Director is intended to provide an opportunity for a fixed term to a person at an early stage in their academic career to develop their research activity and managerial skills in order to enhance their suitability for a permanent position in a university or related institution elsewhere. The post-holder will be bound by the BSA’s code of conduct as set out in the contract of employment.

The salary will be up to €25,000: health insurance and rent-free accommodation will be provided.  The position is available from 1^st July 2019. A probationary period will apply.

Further information about the post and the British School at Athens is available at: http://www.bsa.ac.uk.

Informal enquiries about the post may be addressed to the BSA Director, Professor John Bennet, by e-mail (director@bsa.ac.uk) or telephone (+30 2111022805).

Application:

Applications should be sent as an email attachment to the BSA at school.administrator@bsa.ac.uk by Monday 17th December 2018.

Applicants are asked to supply the following:-

• A covering letter (of no more than two pages), giving the applicant’s contact details, outlining their reasons for applying, giving details of supporting enclosures, and summarising the applicant’s principal qualifications for the job;
• A curriculum vitae, giving details of past employment, academic and other qualifications, language skills, other relevant experience;
• A description (of no more than two pages) of the research which the applicant proposes to pursue while in post, detailing timetable and publication plans;
• The names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of two academic referees, whom the candidate has contacted in advance and who have agreed to supply letters of reference which they will send to administrator@bsa.ac.uk by the closing date.

Further information about the British School at Athens

An educational charity founded in 1886, the British School at Athens (BSA) is the UK’s research hub in the humanities and social sciences in Greece and its wider Balkan, European, Mediterranean and Levantine contexts.  It conducts, facilitates and promotes research of international excellence in all periods – from the Palaeolithic to the present – and across all humanities and social science disciplines, as well as offering targeted courses to develop the next generation of researchers and academics in those fields.  Greece’s centrality in the history of the western tradition, combined with its key position in post-Ottoman southern Europe and on the front line of the current refugee crisis, make it an unusually rich location for research.

The BSA forms part of the British Academy's network of British International Research Institutes (BIRI) which sustains and supports British research overseas. In Athens we support research in Greece and neighbouring countries as well as collaborations with local institutions. Our 130-year history brings a strong reputation, an unparalleled regional network, an accumulation of library and material resources, and a body of expertise that benefit both UK-based researchers and those who engage with us as research partners.  In the 2017-18 session, for example, over 600 researchers and almost 1,000 students used our facilities and the BSA collaborated with 17 UK institutions and 58 institutions in Greece.

The BSA’s goals are achieved through: 

• an academic programme of seminars, lectures, and conferences;
• its internationally renowned library;
• the work of the Fitch Laboratory in science-based archaeological research across the Mediterranean;
• supporting the work of individual researchers from the UK and elsewhere, including applications for study and fieldwork permits; advice on the development of research programmes; accommodation and facilities in Athens and Knossos; and provision of online services;
• making research carried out at the BSA or with its assistance known through the publication of its journals and monograph series;
• promoting the use of its archival, laboratory, and museum collections by the scholarly community worldwide;
• providing funding (including studentships and visiting fellowships) for research in Greece, and to enable Greek researchers to visit the UK;
• providing internships and training courses for undergraduates, postgraduates, and schoolteachers. 

The School’s Newsletters (June and December 2017, and June 2018), Corporate Plan and Strategic Plan for Research 2015-2020 are posted on www.bsa.ac.uk.

Size and Scope

The School, founded in 1886, is an institute for advanced research and a registered UK charity (no. 208673). It maintains a hostel, world class library, archive, laboratory for archaeological science and offices in Athens; a smaller hostel, library and museum for study purposes in Knossos; and an office in London. It has five full-time academic staff (including the Knossos Curator), two research fellows, three full-time and two part-time administrative/secretarial staff, three full-time library/archival staff; and five full-time and two part-time domestic staff. The academic staff, the research fellows, the IT Officer, and the Archivist are all actively engaged in research, and all staff are actively encouraged to undertake professional development. In addition, the School is supported by research-active non-executive staff in the UK – in particular the Chair of Council (Dr Carol Bell) and the Deputy Honorary Treasurer (Huw Smith). Its turnover for the financial year 2017-18 was approximately £1.50m. It offers two full studentships and several smaller bursaries for scholars every year. The School has just over 300 Basic subscribers and over 200 members, i.e. scholars or scientists who use its facilities for study purposes every year. In addition, around 1,000 researchers, who are not members, are given rights to use the library each year.

Staffing

The School has the following research staff, details of whose research interests and publications are available on the School’s website (www.bsa.ac.uk):

Full-time academic staff: Professor John Bennet, Director; Dr Evangelia Kiriatzi, Director of the Fitch Laboratory; Dr Chryssanthi Papadopoulou, Assistant Director; Dr Noémi Müller, Scientific Research Officer; Dr Kostis Christakis, Knossos Curator.

Full-time research fellows: the current Leventis Fellow, Dr Eirini Avramopoulou; the Williams Fellow in ceramic petrology.

Research-active staff with other primary responsibilities: Ms Amalia Kakissis, Archivist, Dr Chavdar Tzochev, IT Officer.

Infrastructure and Facilities

The School’s principal research infrastructure consists of its Library, its Museum, the Fitch Laboratory and its facilities at Knossos. Most staff are based in Athens, but a London office is maintained in the British Academy (10 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AH), staffed by a part-time Administrative Assistant and a part-time Development Officer.

            The Library in Athens contains over 70,000 monographs, 1,300 periodical titles and 2,000 maps, and has space for 50 readers. It is staffed by two full-time librarians (Mrs Penny Wilson-Zarganis and Ms Sandra Pepelasis) with the help of a student library assistant. Members have 24-hour access. While providing a broad, research-level coverage of Greek archaeology of all periods, it specialises in the fields of Aegean prehistory, ancient art and epigraphy, and Byzantine and modern Greek studies; it also houses historical collections (such as George Finlay’s library) and a particularly good collection of Greek and Balkan journals. Its collections are complemented by those of the other foreign schools and institutes in Athens with whom we have reciprocal arrangements giving access to a unique collection of more than 450,000 titles on Hellenic Studies. We have particularly strong links with the neighbouring Blegen and Gennadius libraries of the American School, with whom we share a common online library catalogue (AMBROSIA, American British Online Search in Athens). 

            The School’s Archive collections contain records of the School’s field projects going back to 1886; material from the Byzantine Research Fund, c. 1895-1936 (c. 6,500 unique plans, drawings and photographs of Byzantine architecture - some of buildings now destroyed); the George Finlay papers, including journals from the Greek War of Independence; travel notebooks (Gell, Stuart); ethnographic records and a large collection of glass negatives. Our archivist is responsible for access and conservation of the collection and has secured outside funding in support of projects to conserve, electronically catalogue and digitise images from selected collections.

            The Marc and Ismene Fitch Laboratory of Archaeological Science, founded in 1974, was the first of its kind in Greece.  It specialises principally in the analysis of inorganic materials (mainly pottery, as well as metals, wall paintings, glass) and in geophysical prospection, specialisms which are complementary to the neighbouring Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. It maintains facilities for petrological analysis of pottery (facilities for thin section preparation and 3 research polarising microscopes coupled with digital photography system) and a WD-XRF spectrometer for chemical analysis. It houses comparative collections of over 10,000 archaeological samples and over 3,000 geological samples. For the needs of geophysical prospection it has a magnetometer and a resistivity meter. It also maintains reference collections of animal and fish bones as well as of seeds with ample space for strewing archaeological material, and offers annually two bursaries for graduate students or early-career postdocs and a visiting lectureship. It is staffed by its Director, a Scientific Research Officer, an administrator/analytical assistant, a research fellow, and visiting researchers or research associates linked to specific externally-funded projects. The Fitch plays a full part in the School’s postgraduate teaching activities, currently staging an annual short course on ceramic petrology.

Knossos has been a highly productive centre of research for the British School at Athens since 1900, when Sir Arthur Evans and David Hogarth, then School Director, began systematic excavations there. It remains a powerhouse of research, both in the field and in the study of excavated material, under the aegis of the BSA. The Knossos Research Centre is focused upon the Stratigraphical Museum (a study centre and finds archive for all British fieldwork at Knossos since the time of Evans, and for several other School projects focused elsewhere in Crete) and has a self-catering hostel (the Taverna) and library, open year-round.  The Library has a good collection of books and offprints (especially about Crete), and full access to e-resources via AMBROSIA.  The Library is also used by local researchers, members of the Archaeological Service, the University of Crete, and other institutions. The Taverna, which has 10 beds, serves principally as a base for those studying in the Stratigraphical Museum or the Herakleion Museum.  Knossos is fully integrated into the School’s ICT network.  There is a resident Curator and a small domestic staff.

In addition, the School’s administrative and academic staff (principally the Administrator) makes use of the School’s wide-ranging connections to help individual scholars with permit applications.

Dissemination and Publication of Research

The BSA maintains a policy of publishing the results of its own research, particularly in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy and history. The School’s Annual (running since 1895 and published by CUP) is devoted to publishing research in all areas of the School’s broad scope, including work carried out by by its officers and other members. The School also compiles annually in collaboration with the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Archaeology in Greece, a collection of synthetic articles on recent archaeological fieldwork in Greece which draws on Archaeology in Greece Online, a regularly updated compilation of fieldwork reports produced in collaboration with the École française d’Athènes. Final reports on major excavation or survey projects usually appear in the School’s Supplementary Volumes, while other collections are published in two series: BSA Studies in Greek Antiquity (CUP) and BSA Studies in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies (Routledge). The School recognises its role in conserving and facilitating access to the archives (in all media) produced by major excavations, surveys or other studies. To this end we are active in cataloguing and digitizing our archive, and in making it available via the School’s website.