ATHENS – On Wednesday, September 16, College Year in Athens kickstarted the fall season with a virtual lecture on Democracy in Ancient Athens with guest speaker CYA Trustee Emeritus, Professor John McK. Camp II, Director of the Athenian Agora Excavations at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

Dr. Camp reviewed ancient Athenian democracy, as we understand it from the agora excavations, and compare it with modern versions, including a consideration of what could usefully be re-instituted from antiquity.

Facilitating the discussion was John Karavas, professor of Archaeology, who teaches the CYA courses: Sports, Games & Spectacles in Graeco-Roman World; Ancient Macedon to Death of Alexander the Great; To the Strongest: The Ancient Near East from the Death of Alexander to the Coming of Rome; and CYA's three-week intensive field course Excavations at Aixonidai Halai: Voula Field School.

Guest Speaker John McK. Camp II is the Director of the Athenian Agora Excavations at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Classics at Randolph-Macon College, and Trustee Emeritus at College Year in Athens. 

Dr. Camp is regarded as the foremost expert on the topography of Athens and Attica and has worked in the Athenian Agora since 1966, first as an excavator, later as assistant director, and now as the director, which he became in 1994. He has received many awards and honors for his work, has taught and lectured throughout the United States and the world, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1985-1996 and continues to teach there.

Dr. Camp holds an AB in Classics from Harvard University (1968) and an MA (1972) and PhD (1977) in Classical Archaeology from Princeton University.

Discussant John Karavas is a graduate of Oxford and Durham's Universities. His primary areas of interest lie in Hellenistic and Roman History, Greek and Roman provincial archaeology (with a particular interest in Roman frontiers) as well as ancient warfare. He has been associated with various research groups and institutes both in the U.K. and in Eastern Europe.

Over the years, he has participated in many excavations in Serbia, Romania, and Greece. He is currently the Director of excavations at Halmyris, a Greek/Roman/Byzantine military and urban site on the Danube Delta in Romania. As of 2021, he will also be conducting excavations on Gratiana, a late Roman fort located in Romania. John Karavas has taught at CYA since 2003.