4th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG) 

Classics at the Crossroads 

3 – 4 September 2026 

Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) 

Draft Programme* 

WEDNESDAY, 2 September 2026

15.00 – 17.00 Classical Association of Ghana General Meeting (Classics Section, Department of Philosophy & Classics, University of Ghana) 

THURSDAY, 3 September 2026 

Plenary           I:         Welcome       &         Opening         Session          (MainAuditorium)

                   Chair:  Professor      Wazi   Apoh  (Dean, School of Arts, University of Ghana)

08.00               Registration

08.30               Guests Seated 

09.00 – 09.05  Introduction of Chairperson, Special Guest of Honour and Invited Guests: Dr Stephen Oppong Peprah (Department of  

Philosophy and Classics, University of Ghana) 

                        Chairperson’s Response: Professor Wazi Apoh (Dean, School of Arts, University of Ghana)              

09.05 – 09.10 Welcome Address: Professor Peter K. T. Grant (Interim President, Classical Association of Ghana)

09.10 – 09.15 Brief Remarks: Dr Richmond Kwesi (Head, Department of Philosophy & Classics, University of Ghana) 

09.15 – 09.25 Address by Special Guest of Honour: Professor Joseph Awetori Yaro (Provost, College of Humanities, University of Ghana) 

09.25 – 09.30  Introduction of Keynote Speaker I: Professor Mohammed Majeed (Department of Philosophy & Classics, University of Ghana) 

09.30 – 10.30 Keynote I: Professor Luke Roman (Professor of Classics/Head, Department of Classics, Memorial University, Canada)      

Topic: Global Networks in Classics and Beyond: Ancient Worlds, New Disciplinary Paradigms 

10.30 – 10.35 Chairperson’s Closing Remarks 

10.35 – 11.05 Group Photograph and Coffee Break 

Plenary II: Chair: Dr Frisbee Sheffield (Associate Professor of Classics, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge) 

11.05 – 11.10 Introduction of Chairperson: Mr Michael Okyere Asante (Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge) 

11.10 – 11.15 Introduction of Keynote Speaker II: Professor Hendrik Lorenz (Department of Philosophy, Princeton University) 

11.15 – 12.15 Keynote II: Dr Sarah Derbew (Assistant Professor of Classics, Stanford University) 

                       Topic: From Aksum to Athens 

12.15 – 12.20 Chairperson’s Closing Remarks 

12.20 – 13.30 Lunch

MC: Mr Daniel Ocansey Jnr. 

Parallel Sessions

13.30 – 15.30 Session I 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Seminar Room 2 

Panel 1: The Classical Tradition Chair: Dr Rosanna Omitowoju

Panel 2: Deconstructing Texts and Ideas I 

Chair: Dr Shushma Malik

Panel 3: Reception  Chair: Prof Olakunbi Olasope

From the Lyceum to the University of Ghana:  Classical Educational Ideals, Colonial 

Transmission, and their Transformation in Ghanaian Higher Education 

Benedicta Brobbey & Kwabena Andoh (Ghana) 

An Afro-communitarian Deconstruction of the Classical Construct of Youth as Turbulence 

Paul K. Michael (Free State) 

Pill(ar)s of Pain: ‘Trojan-Owu Women Poetics’ and Apocalyptic Performativity     

Tunde Awosanmi (Ibadan)

 Fortunes of Classics as an Academic Discipline in Nigerian Universities, 1948- 2022 

Joseph Eneji (Pan-Atlantic) 

Restoration of African Historiography: A Critique of Eurocentric Censure through African Methods 

Peter Kwame Womber & Peter Grant (Cape Coast) 

Rewriting Fate: Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame as Resistant Reception of  Greek Tragedy 

Omoyeni Oyetade (Ibadan) 

Malawi’s ‘Odyssey’: A. E. Dziko’s Bwampini and the Dziko Question 

Richard Hewitt (Kamuzu Academy) 

Excavating Pluralities of Bodies and Belonging: Tensions and Examples from Classics 

Olamide Longe (Ibadan) 

“It was Antigone Who Symbolised our Struggle”: The Role of Greek Tragedy in the Black Consciousness Movement 

Leo Kershaw (Oxford) 

Alexander the Great in Central Asia: Soviet and Post-Soviet Symbolic Reinterpretation Maria Rybakova (Nazarbayev)

From Oedipus to Ọjṣógbó: Classical Tragedy, Nollywood, and the Rebirth of African Moral Imagination 

Grace Bartholomew (Adamawa State)

15.30 – 17.00 Session II 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Seminar Room 2 

Panel 4: Pedagogy I 

Chair: Prof Luke Roman 

Panel 5: Deconstructing Texts and Ideas II Chair: Prof ‘Goke Akinboye

Panel 6: Greek Literature  Chair: Dr Jonathan Asante Otchere

Classics Beyond Borders: Open and Accessible Pedagogy, or How Much Can a Line of Latin Do? 

Rosanna Omitowoju (Cambridge) 

Alexander, Dhū al-Qarnayn, and the Ethics of Cross-Cultural Translation 

Idowu Alade (Ibadan) 

A Feminist Reading of Motherhood in Euripides and Selected Akan Plays 

Stella Antwiwaa (Cape Coast) 

Platonic Insights from Books 1 and 2 of the Laws: Nurturing Values through Curriculum Development in Selected African Countries 

Abraham Lincoln Nutsugah (Ghana) & Marcia Mandiyanike (KwaZulu-Natal) 

Toward the Alexandrian Archive: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Heirs of Herodotus 

Diontay Wolfries-Thomas (Harvard) 

Reading Greek Myths through the African Experiences of Possession, Madness and Gender 

Olakunbi Olasope (Ibadan) & Gifty E. Katahena (Ghana) 

Aristotle and the Future of Higher Education: Reclaiming the Formative Aims of Education 

Obinna Ikejumba (Pan-Atlantic) 

Eliot, Achebe, and the Question of the Classic

Katie Fleming (Queen Mary) 

Constructed Voices: Female Speech and Epistemic Injustice in Euripides’ Medea

Vera Obeng (Ghana)

FRIDAY, 4 September 2026  

19.00 – 10.00 Conference Dinner (African Regent Hotel) 

8.00                Registration

09.00 – 10.30 Session III 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Panel 7: Pedagogy II Chair: Dr Stephen Peprah  

Panel 8: Deconstructing Texts and Ideas III Chair: Dr Nancy M. B. Gyamfi 

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Classical Studies: Evaluating Its Impact on Interpretation, Teaching, and Engagement for a New Generation 

Kwabena Andoh (Ghana) 

Retributive Justice for Violation of Hospitality (Xenia) in Euripides’ Hecuba and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Philomena Nwoko (Ibadan) 

AI-Driven Digitization of Saharan Epic Forms as Comparative Antiquity in Reconfiguring Classical Environmental Thought 

Michael Markus Kutte (Modibbo Adama)

Comparative Analysis of Concept of Moderation in the Works of Horace and Ebenezer Obey 

Babatunde Blavo (Ibadan) 

Former Students’ Retrospective Experiences Studying Greek and Latin in a Pre-tertiary School in Accra 

Michael Okyere Asante (Cambridge/UESD) 

Benin Bronzes, Parthenon Marbles, and the Empire of Memory: Towards a Radical African Restitution of Classics 

Maureen Markus (Modibbo Adama) 

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break 

11.00 – 12.30 Session IV 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Panel 9: Decolonization Chair: Dr Stella Antwiwaa

Panel 10: Comparative Texts and Ideas I Chair: Dr Stephen Morgan 

Decolonising Geopolitics: Re-reading Athenian Power through African Developmental Realities 

Daniel Ocansey (Ghana) 

Kwame Nkrumah and Tacitean Rhetoric: An Assessment of Civic Responsibility and Persuasive Adaptation 

Emmanuel Koomson (Ghana) 

Decolonisation as Disentanglement 

Dylan Futter (Wits) 

Verification in Ritual Initiation: Purification and Authority in PGM XIII.343-646 and Zulu Ukuthwasa  

Sihe Khumalo (Pretoria)

Africanising Classics Beyond Symbolism: Curriculum, Power, and the Future of Classical Studies in Ghana 

Daniel Ocansey (Ghana) & Peter Grant (Cape Coast)

Structuring the Barbarians: Spatial Rhetoric and Comparative Imperial Legitimization in Rome and Han China 

Kehan Chen (Dover Sherborn) 

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 

13.30 – 15.00 Session V 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Panel 11: Plato Chair: Dr Frisbee Sheffield

Panel 12: Comparative Texts and Ideas II Chair: Prof Peter Grant 

The Unity of the Tripartite Soul in Book IV of Plato’s Republic: An Alternate Reading Through an ibuanyidanda Ontology 

Tshetsana Rantao (Wits)

Coffins, Carved Stone and Character: Funerary Art as Moral Statement in Rome and Ghana  

Gifty Katahena & El-Benjamin Odoi (Ghana) 

For the Love of Wisdom: Understanding Addiction from a Platonic Theory of Desire

Kirsten Dorkin (Wits)

Kingship, Royal and Family Succession/Inheritance in Heroic Greece: Reflections in the Akan Society of Ghana 

Jonathan Asante Otchere (Cape Coast)

The Admirable and Shameful in Socrates’ Conception of Happiness in Gorgias 474c3-477d5 

Kofi Ackah (Ghana) 

Fear, Belief, and Authority: Responses to Epidemic Diseases from the Graeco-Roman Antiquity to Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa 

Jacob Tahiru & Gifty E. Katahena (Ghana) 

15.00 – 16.00 Session VI 

Main Auditorium 

Seminar Room 1 

Panel 13: Global Classics Chair: Prof Hendrik Lorenz

Panel 14: Comparative Texts and Ideas III Chair: Dr Peter Womber 

Anton Wilhelm Amo and Cicero on Philosophy 

Stephen Peprah (Ghana) 

Punic Paradigms: Assessing the Reception of Roman Imperialism as a Model of Subjugation in Modern Geopolitical Warfare

Hikma Badmus (Ghana) and Peter Grant (Cape Coast)

“The Strong Do What They Can”: Thucydides, Africa, and the Global Politics of Power 

Youssef Cherif (Columbia Global Centre, Tunis/Leiden)

Echoes of Antiquity: The Trajectory of the Delian League and the Future of Nato

‘Goke Akinboye (Ibadan) 

16.00 Group Photograph & Coffee Break 

16.30 Mock Retrial of Socrates (Cedi Conference Centre) 

SATURDAY, 5 September 2026

07.00                Tour of Shai Hills and Nature Reserve (this is a full day’s event) 

*This programme is provisional and subject to change.