The Don Fowler Memorial Lecture Series, renamed the ‘Fowler Lecture’ in 2017, was founded in 2000 in in memory of former Classics Fellow of Jesus, Don Paul Fowler, who died in 1999 at the age of 47.

The annual lecture series in his name, hosted by Jesus College and inaugurated by a lecture delivered in May 2001 by Professor Stephen Hinds of the University of Washington, has established itself as the foremost public lecture series on Latin literature worldwide. Don was a wide-ranging and original classicist, and a much-loved tutor at Jesus. Best known for his work on the Roman poet Lucretius, he was a powerful influence on the way Latinists still think and write about their subject. The Lecture Committee meets annually to select and invite speakers from the UK and abroad, and the lectures are held early in the Trinity Term. Don was keen to encourage classicists from all backgrounds and at all stages of their career; to date all Lecturers have been Don’s former colleagues, friends, or students.

Fowler Lecturers and Titles since 2015

2015

Catharine Edwards, Birkbeck.
‘The philosopher as epic hero: Augustan poetry in Seneca’s letters.’

2016

Alison Sharrock, Manchester.
‘Interpretation and the Metaphor of Authority’.

2017 

David Scourfield, NUI Maynooth.
‘Fragmentations and Forgettings: (An)atomising Classics in English Modernist Fiction.’

2018

Christina Kraus, Yale.
‘Livy’s Faliscan Schoolmaster.’

2019

William Fitzgerald, King’s College London.
‘Lucretius’ Car Crash and other anachronisms‘.

2021

Postponed due to Covid-19

2022

Michèle Lowrie, Chicago.
‘Ancient Customs and Men’.

2023

Monica Gale, Trinity Dublin
‘Five Ways of Reading Catullus‘.