Biography

Colby College - Classics

Director of the Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities
Higher Education
Kerill
O'Neill
Waterville, Maine
Kerill O’Neill, the Julian D. Taylor Professor of Classics at Colby College, is the founding Director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities. Prior to this appointment, he served as Humanities Division Chair (2008–2012). He serves as leader of the Network of Liberal Arts Colleges and Small Universities, and is a member of the International Advisory Board for the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). He also serves on the board of the New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC). Since 2002, he has been the Field Director of the Mitrou Archaeological Project, a survey and excavation project run in co-operation with the University of Tennessee and the Greek Archaeological Service. As director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities, he promotes an inclusive vision of the arts and humanities that is heavily student-focused. He highlights the value of the humanistic disciplines both as a rigorous intellectual pursuit that helps make sense of life’s big questions, and as an excellent preparation for full lives and successful careers in a rapidly changing world. He frequently serves as a consultant to colleges and universities looking to strengthen the humanities, enhance student learning, or build faculty initiatives. His research interests focus on the intersection of literature and material culture and, increasingly, on the classical tradition. He has written on love magic in Latin poetry, religious cult in Bronze Age archaeology, and the impact of Greek tragedy on later literature and art. He holds a B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin, a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and was a Townsend Scholar at the Centre Louis Gernet in Paris.