Anne Sheppard

My research interests centre round the interaction between philosophy and literature.  After studying ‘Greats’, i.e. Classics and Philosophy, at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, I did an Oxford DPhil on the literary theory of the Neoplatonist philosopher, Proclus.  This led me to work on other aspects of Neoplatonism and in particular to an interest in Neoplatonic psychology and philosophy of mind.  These interests combined in the writing of The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics, a book dealing with the ancient concept of imagination in relation to literature and art, which was published in 2014.  I recently completed a translation, commentary and introduction to Plotinus, Ennead 1.8 for Parmenides Press and am now engaged on a new research project, on Neoplatonist views of drama.  I taught Philosophy at Oxford, then Classics at the University of Durham and Philosophy at the Open University before coming to Royal Holloway in 1989.  I retired from my full-time post at Royal Holloway in 2017 and am now Professor Emerita of Ancient Philosophy.  In 2020 I became an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London and a Corresponding Member of the Plato Centre at Trinity College Dublin.