Collins-Elliott Named Interim Head of Classics
After four years as associate head of the Department of Classics, Associate Professor Stephen Collins-Elliott has stepped into the role of interim head.
As Associate Professor Stephen Collins-Elliott steps into the role of interim head of the Department of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, he is eager to hear from students, faculty, and staff.
“Good leadership, I think, is fundamentally about stewardship, listening, and helping others achieve their best,” he said. “I am very fortunate to be able to work each day with an excellent group of faculty and staff, and grateful to our prior leadership for having brought the department to its current status. It is thanks to all of them that I look forward to my role as interim head.”
Collins-Elliott joined UT as an assistant professor in 2014 and has served as associate head of the department since fall 2022.
“One of the most rewarding things about this job is just having a conversation about the ancient world—if students ever want to stop by and talk about any part of the ancient Mediterranean, my door is open,” he said.
As a teenager, Collins-Elliott’s curiosity about the similarities between Spanish and French first drove him to study Latin and then ancient Greek.
At UT, has taught an array of courses on classical archaeology, Roman archaeology, Roman culture, and Latin. He has developed undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on Roman North Africa, and undergraduate courses on Pompeii, as well as the classics and anthropology course Archaeological Statistics. “The stats course is designed to introduce students to statistical methods and how to make and critique statistical arguments, as well as provide training in R, a freely available statistical program,” he said.
Collins-Elliott is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, participating in the Mediterranean Archaeology track of the master’s degree program.
From 2016 to 2023, he co-directed a Moroccan-American archaeological project with Aomar Akerraz of the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine, Rabat.
Gardens of the Hesperides: The Rural Archaeology of the Loukkos Valley aimed to survey and reconstruct the rural economy around Lixus, the oldest city in northwestern Africa, and evaluate the impact of Roman annexation on small- and medium-scale sites. The project is currently in its publication phase.
“In my early 20s, it was a happenstance experience that brought me to archaeology, excavating at the Sanctuary of Helen and Menelaus near Sparta,” Collins-Elliott said. “Working on statistical applications in archaeology is an unavoidable consequence of having been a math major.”
“Looking back, my interests have laid at intersections, where it feels like there is room to explore questions unanswered or unasked, and where new perspectives and new evidence can change and enrich our understanding of the past, as it invariably reflects upon our future,” he said.
by Amy Beth Miller