Jonas Grethlein (born 1978) is a German scholar of Ancient Greek literature. Having received a doctorate from the University of Freiburg, he is a professor of Ancient Greek at Heidelberg University. His academic work has focused on

Greek tragedy Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...

, the

Homeric epics Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

, narratology, and historiography. In 2012, he was awarded a Starting Grant of about €1.4 Million by the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

Academic career

Born in 1978 in Munich, Jonas Grethlein studied

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and History at the University of Göttingen, Trinity College, Oxford, and the University of Freiburg, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 2002. In 2005, he attained a

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in Classics and Ancient history at the same institution. In 2007, he became an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2008, he was appointed to the Chair of Ancient Greek literature at Heidelberg University. Grethlein was elected to two professorships in the United Kingdom: the Chair of Classics at the University of St Andrews in 2012, and the Regius Professorship of Greek at the University of Cambridge in 2021; he declined to take up the appointment on both occasions.

Work

Grethlein wrote his doctoral dissertation (''Asyl und Athen. Die Konstruktion kollektiver Identität in der griechischen Tragödie'') on the topic of

. Continuing to publish on tragedy, has also written about the

, narratology, and historiography.

Honours and awards

In 2006, Grethlein won the

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis (Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize), in honor and memory of the German physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, is funded by the ''Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung'' (BMBF, German Ministry of Education and Research), and ...

, an award given to young researchers by the

German Research Foundation The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

. In 2012, he was awarded a Starting Grant of about €1.4 Million by the

for a project entitled ''AncNar – Experience and Teleology in Ancient Narrative''. He has been elected to research positions at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, the

Berlin Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (german: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) is an interdisciplinary institute founded in 1981 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany, dedicated to research projects in the natural and social sciences. It is modeled ...

, and the Marsilius-Kolleg at Heidelberg. Since 2021, he has been a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.In 2023, Grethlein won the Leibniz Prize.Denis Schnur, ''Gleich zwei Leibniz-Prise für Heidelberg'', in: Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, 8 December 2023, p. 3.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grethlein, Jonas Living people 1978 births German classical philologists Academics from Munich University of Göttingen alumni University of Freiburg alumni Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford Academic staff of Heidelberg University University of California, Santa Barbara faculty