Call for papers- Women Travellers, Explorers, and Proto-archaeologists
5th workshop on Women in the Archaeology of Greece
In the Footsteps of Egeria. Women Travellers, Explorers, and Proto-archaeologists Across the Lands of the Ancient Greek World (18th–19th Centuries)
When: 09 March 2027
Where: EFA conference room | Didotou 6, Athens
Organised by the École française d’Athènes and the Belgian School at Athens (EBSA)
Submission deadline: 20 November 2026
Contact & Information:
clemence.weber-pallez@univ-tlse2.fr | t.kalantzo@gmail.com | sylviane.dederix@gmail.com.
Until the development of modern technologies, travel and exploration demanded a spirit of adventure, as well as independence, courage, strength, and resilience. Such qualities have traditionally been associated with masculinity, embodied in figures such as Odysseus, the archetype of the traveller. Yet women, too, ventured far from home throughout history – whether as migrants, traders, explorers, or pilgrims. Egeria, for instance, travelled from the western Roman world to the Holy Land in the late 4th century. Her written account offers a rare glimpse into a woman’s experience of long-distance travel in Late Antiquity, while also providing valuable evidence of women’s mobility in the distant past.
The history of women travellers in Greece during the modern and contemporary periods appears to have slipped through a gap between two research traditions that both tend to privilege pioneers. On the one hand, extensive scholarship has focused on the predominantly male travellers who set out for the territories of present-day Greece before and during the Greek Revolution. As interest shifted from Roman art towards Greek Classicism, antiquarians, artists, architects, and proto-archaeologists began travelling to Greece from the late 17th century onward, documenting – and, in some cases, looting – its antiquities. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these admirers of Ancient Greece were joined by philhellene Romantics who supported the Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, as well as by scientists such as the seemingly all-male members of the French Expedition of the Morea in 1829. With the exception of a few tokenised women (e.g. Lady Montagu, Lady Craven), the early history of the Western rediscovery of Greek antiquities has thus been narrated largely as a history of men. On the other hand, the exponential growth of Gender Studies over the past three decades has generated increasing interest in women travellers, particularly those who ventured into destinations constructed as exotic: the Ottoman Orient in the 18th century, followed by the peripheries of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As a result, women travellers in Greece have remained marginal to both strands of scholarship: overlooked within the predominantly male history of early travel in Greece, and overshadowed within the history of women’s travel by adventurers whose journeys took them to the far reaches of an expanding world in the 19th century.
In addition, most studies of women’s travel, and of women travellers in Greece in particular, have been conducted by literary scholars, who have approached these women’s experiences through the lens of their travel accounts. The focus has been mostly on two interrelated questions: first, whether travel and travel writing contributed to the emancipation of Western women; and second, whether women’s travel writing constitutes a genre in its own right. Scholars have thus debated the extent to which female travel narratives offer a distinctive expression of women’s interiority and intimacy, or whether they should instead be understood as variations on fundamentally masculine forms of colonial and imperial discourse, albeit with a degree of originality. In this respect, the treatment of the harem – a space forbidden to men yet accessible to Western women – has become emblematic of representations of a fantasised Orient. Descriptions of this stereotypical Oriental space have been presented as the principal, if not the sole, genuinely distinctive contribution of women travellers to the scientific and sociological understanding of foreign lands. Yet some women, such as the Countess de Gasparin, who travelled through the Peloponnese in the mid-19th century, documented the conditions under which scientific missions were carried out, shedding light on aspects commonly neglected in men’s writing, such as roads and inns. Others offered insights into ongoing excavations, describing or drawing works of art, as did Mary Dawson Damer in her travelogue, published in 1841. Furthermore, many women might be described as ‘armchair travellers’: although they did not themselves travel abroad, they nonetheless participated in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge through correspondence with their husbands or sons engaged in exploration – as did Hermione Quinet, who was instrumental in bringing her husband Edgar’s work to fruition. Furthermore, and most importantly, an elusive tradition of Greek women travelling within and around the Greek world, with an interest in education, history, archaeology, and the protection of cultural heritage, might be traced through figures such as Eleni Tositsa – who donated the plots of land on which the National Archaeological Museum and National Technological University of Athens were built – but remains largely unexplored by scholars.
In order to address these gaps in current scholarship, the 5th Workshop on Women in Greek Archaeology focuses on women travellers across the lands of the ancient Greek world during the 18th and 19th centuries. The geographical scope of the workshop encompasses the territory of the present-day Greek state, as well as regions considered part of the wider ancient Greek world, with the aim of reintegrating women into the early history of Greek classical studies. Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:
- Biographies of women travellers, originating both from the lands of the ancient Greek world and from abroad, with particular emphasis on the motivations that led them to travel, the conditions of their journeys, their itineraries, and their experiences of travel.
- The role played by women travellers, including ‘armchair travellers’, in the early development of fields such as botany, sociology, geography, history, and (proto-)archaeology.
- The scientific and cultural production of women travellers, including their diaries, correspondence, drawings and sketches, photographs, and collections.
- The social networks in which women travellers were embedded, including their relationships with other travellers, diplomats, scientists, artists, and the local communities with which they came into contact.
- The role of gender in shaping perspectives on exoticism, romanticism, and otherness – both among women travellers and in local responses to them – as well as in the construction of individual and collective identities in a context of increasing mobility to and within the lands of the ancient Greek world.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations to be delivered in English, Greek, French, Dutch, or German. Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to clemence.weber-pallez@univ-tlse2.fr by 20 November 2026.
The proceedings of the workshop will be published in English in a venue to be determined.
Participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
