Sue Alcock, 1983

Sue read Classics at Clare. Currently the inaugural holder of the Barnett Family Professorship of Classical Archaeology at the University of Oklahoma, Sue has published several books and articles on Archaeology. She has lectured and served as Provost in America and is an Honorary Fellow at Clare.

Who was your greatest Clare influence and why?

The unfailingly supportive Clare Fellow Anthony M. Snodgrass, who taught me how to be a mentor and how to remember what really matters in an academic career. And the Clare Middle Common Room (MCR) crowd which took me in, grew me up, and made me laugh.

Sue's Story

I have never reflected on how my life would be different without my time at Clare because, frankly, I can’t imagine it. 

I arrived, on a Clare Mellon Fellowship, sharp but green, curious but ingenuous, and quite quite terrified.  I left on a confident career pathway that has provided me as much gladness as success.  I left having learned the art of conversation.  

I left having played Pooh sticks.  I left politically marked by having lived through the ‘special relationship’ of Thatcher and Reagan.  I left with an abiding love of English choral music.  I left with a sad admixture of British and American punctuation conventions.  I left with the firm conviction that, after all, much of Monty Python was true.  I left with a deep admiration for Elizabeth de Clare. I left Mem Court swearing I would never lodge so cold again. 

Nostalgia often gets a bad rap.  That’s not always deserved.