Douglas Cairns Explained

Douglas Cairns
Discipline:Classics
Sub Discipline:Emotions, Distributed Cognition, aidos
Birth Place:1961, Glasgow, Scotland.
Alma Mater:University of Glasgow (MA, PhD)
Honorific Suffix:FHEA, FRSE, FBA, MAE
Notable Works:Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (1993)
Doctoral Advisor:Douglas MacDowell
Alexander F. Garvie
Workplaces:University of Glasgow
University of Edinburgh

Douglas Laidlaw Cairns (born 1961) is a British classicist, Professor of Classics at the University of Edinburgh, former Chair of the Classical Association, and Chair of Edinburgh University Press.[1] He specialises in the study of Greek society, ethics, literature, emotional life, and the ways in which these are reflected in Greek epic, tragedy, and lyric poetry.

Early life

Cairns was born in Glasgow in 1961, growing up on the Sandyhills estate. His father was the local agent for the Co-operative Insurance Society and a prominent member of the local branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain, while his mother worked for the mobile unit of the Blood Transfusion Service.[2]

Cairns was taught Greek and Latin at Eastbank Academy in Glasgow’s East End, one of the last state-maintained schools in Scotland to teach Latin.[3]

Career

Cairns graduated with a MA (Hons) in Classics from the University of Glasgow in 1983, and was awarded a PhD in Greek from Glasgow in December 1987 for a thesis on the Greek concept of aidōs, or "shame".[4] [5] [6] His thesis was supervised by Douglas MacDowell (the MacDowell Professor of Greek at the time), and Aeschylus scholar Alexander Garvie.

Cairns' work incorporated psychological, anthropological and behavioral research into the study of Greek philology.[7] Significantly, Cairns' work challenged the prominent anthropological dichotomy between 'shame cultures' and 'guilt cultures' which had become central to the scholarship of Hellenists like E. R. Dodds and A. W. H. Adkins, and he went far in arguing that Ancient Greece was not, as had often been claimed, a 'shame culture'.[8] In recent years, Cairns has become a field-leading researcher in the use of conceptual metaphor theory as applied to classical texts, and his work has been described as "one of the first moments of serious engagement with conceptual metaphor in Homeric studies".[9] [10]

Cairns held academic positions at the University of St Andrews, Georg-August Universität, University of Otago, University of Leeds, and the University of Glasgow before he took up the Chair of Classics at Edinburgh in 2004, serving as the Head of Classics from 2004 to 2005 and the Head of School from 2005 to 2008.

Research fellowships

Cairns has held research fellowships at Georg-August Universität, Humboldt Universität, Technische Universität Dresden, won a major research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, and a senior research fellowship from the ERC/Oxford University Project "The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions". He directed the AHRC-funded project "A History of Distributed Cognition"[11] and the Leverhulme Trust International Research Network's "Emotions through Time".[12] [13] He is currently director of the ERC AdG Project 'Honour in Classical Greece'.[14]

He was Visiting Professor in Classics at Kyoto University, Japan (2008), the Peter A. Vlachos Lecturer in Classics at Colby College (2007), Margaret Heavey Lecturer in Classics at NUI Galway (2009), Platsis Symposiast at the University of Michigan (2009), George R. Langford Family Eminent Scholar Chair, Florida State University (2012), and the Visiting Professor in Classics at the University of Pisa (2017).[5] He has also taught at the University of Bologna (2013, 2017), International Christian University, Tokyo (2017), Tokyo University (2017), Fu Jen University, Taiwan (2018), the Scuola Normale di Pisa (2021), and the Università di Cagliari (2022).[5]

He is a Fellow of the British Academy,[15] [16] the Royal Society of Edinburgh[17] [18] a Member of the Academia Europaea,[19] and a recipient of the Anneliese Maier Research Prize awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[20]

David Hume Tower

Cairns was a signatory to a series of letters addressed to Principal of Edinburgh University, Peter Mathesion, by various members of university staff (including Sir Tom Devine) who were opposed to the renaming of David Hume Tower.[21] [22] [23] The renaming followed a small student campaign.[24] Cairns, writing for the Scottish Review, has argued that "Symbolic gestures such as the renaming of buildings in themselves do absolutely nothing to address the real problems of racism, xenophobia, and inequality that beset our society, and there is a real danger that they may in fact serve as cover for the absence of any genuine attempt to do so."[25]

Selected works

Books

Edited volumes

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Annual Report 2023 . 2023 . . Edinburgh . 15 December 2023.
  2. Web site: About Us – Network for Working-Class Classicists . 2023-11-06 . en-GB.
  3. Web site: Council . 2023-11-05 . The Classical Association . en-US.
  4. The concept of Aidos in Greek literature from Homer to 404 BC . Cairns . Douglas Laidlaw . . Enlighten Theses . . Glasgow . 1987 . 15 December 2023 .
  5. Web site: 2023-08-23 . Professor Douglas Cairns . 2023-11-05 . The University of Edinburgh . en.
  6. Web site: 2017-08-16 . My Top 5 Journal of Hellenic Studies Articles – Part III « Classics# « Cambridge Core Blog . 2023-11-06 . en-GB.
  7. Web site: Anneliese Maier Research Award 2018 - The Award Winners . 2023-11-06 . www.humboldt-foundation.de . en.
  8. Book: Cairns, Douglas . Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature . OUP . 1993 . 27-47.
  9. Book: Zanker, Andreas . Metaphor in Homer: Time, Speech and Thought . CUP . 2019 . Cambridge . 57–8.
  10. Web site: Professor Douglas Cairns -Classics- Research in a Nutshell . 2024-03-08 . Media Hopper Create . en.
  11. Web site: Prof Douglas Cairns - PI History of Distributed Cognition . 2023-11-05 . www.hdc.ed.ac.uk.
  12. Web site: About ETT – Emotions through Time: From Antiquity to Byzantium . 2023-11-05 . en-GB.
  13. Web site: 2016-05-24 . Douglas Cairns (PI) – Emotions through Time: From Antiquity to Byzantium . 2023-11-06 . en-GB.
  14. Web site: 2018-02-15 . €1.9 million award to support 'Honour in Classical Greece' project . 2023-11-06 . The University of Edinburgh . en.
  15. Web site: Professor Douglas Cairns FBA . 2023-11-05 . The British Academy . en.
  16. Web site: Professor Douglas Cairns elected to British Academy . The University of Edinburgh . Edinburgh . 20 July 2018 . 15 December 2023 .
  17. Web site: Professor Douglas Cairns . 2023-11-05 . Royal Society of Edinburgh . en-GB.
  18. Web site: 2018-03-09 . Douglas Cairns elected to Royal Society of Edinburgh . 2023-11-06 . The University of Edinburgh . en.
  19. Web site: Academy of Europe: Cairns Douglas . 2023-11-05 . www.ae-info.org.
  20. Web site: Anneliese Maier Research Award 2018 - The Award Winners . 2023-11-06 . www.humboldt-foundation.de . en.
  21. Cairns . Douglas . Coombs . Nathan . Devine . Tom . Hearn . Jonathan . Jarvie . Grant . MacLeod . Gale . Paterson . Lindsay . Rosie . Michael . Thin . Neil . Mathieson . Peter . September 2020 . Letter concerning the David Hume Tower . . English.
  22. Web site: 2020-09-16 . Academics criticise Edinburgh University over David Hume renaming row . 2023-11-06 . The Herald . en.
  23. News: Horne . Marc . 2023-11-06 . David Hume move damages our university, say Edinburgh scholars . . en . 2023-11-07 . 0140-0460.
  24. News: 2020-09-13 . Edinburgh University renames David Hume Tower over 'racist' views . en-GB . BBC News . 2023-11-07.
  25. Web site: Scottish Review: Douglas Cairns . 2023-11-07 . www.scottishreview.net . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20231107031226/https://www.scottishreview.net/DouglasCairns539a.html . 7 November 2023 .