Lana Radloff

Lana Radloff
MA candidate Classics, Faculty of Humanities
Supervisor: Professor Elizabeth Greene
Research topic: Examination of alternate approaches to de-contextualized antiquities
Hometown: a farm near Star City, Saskatchewan

Lana Radloff packed her bags late last spring to spend eight months abroad. Her first stop was to work as a teaching assistant on an excavation in Northern Greece led by Prof. Margriet Haagsma from the University of Alberta. From there, she went to Turkey to work on an underwater survey project and do research at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology with her Brock supervisor, Prof. Elizabeth Greene. After that, she completed a three-month internship at the Athens-based Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG). The institute has primary responsibility for Canadian archaeological research in Greece.

Radloff will be one of several Brock graduate students to give presentations at the March 3 Research Café, Connecting to the World, held as part of the annual Mapping the New Knowledges Graduate Student Research Conference. The Research Café will be held at Pond Inlet from 4:30 to 6:45 p.m. All are welcome.

What did your internship at the Canadian Institute in Greece involve?

I spent my internship facilitating relations between the institute and the public, including public lectures, library research, and serving as a Canadian presence in the international community. I was also in charge of library acquisitions and began overhauling the library inventory to ensure the system was up-to-date and properly categorized.

What is the focus of your graduate research?

My research examines new methodologies that can be utilized by curators in public museums to provide educational value to collections of de-contextualized antiquities. These collections involve artifacts for which there is no record of the context of their discovery. As such, the cultural, historical and social significance of the artifacts has been lost. I’m exploring alternate approaches such as ethics and the creation of hypothetical contexts.

How did you become interested in your area of research?

During the first year of my master’s degree at Brock, Dr. Elizabeth Greene took me and my colleagues to see the Cypriote Collection at the University. She explained the difficulties surrounding antiquities without contextual data for archaeological research, as well as the large number of them throughout the world.

What made you decide to pursue your graduate education at Brock?

The Classics Department at Brock is made up of young, thriving, academics who are very active in their fields of study. The department provides a variety of fieldwork opportunities in Greece, Turkey, and Italy in which students can participate, while there are opportunities to hone my language and literary skills at home.

What are your other interests/hobbies/activities?

I love to travel abroad and learn about other cultures and languages. My summers are usually spent overseas participating in research opportunities and archaeological excavations. Over the past couple years I have started working on underwater excavations, so I learned to scuba dive which I particularly enjoy. When I am at home, I enjoy being physically active at the gym both on my own and in a class setting. Currently, I am taking a kickboxing class, as well as spin classes. Of course, I also love hockey and spending any time I can with my family, although they live out west.

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