On Friday, 7 November 2025, Dr Meaghan McEvoy organised a one-day workshop on Women, Gender, and Queenship through the Ages, with generous support from the Centre for Classical Studies, the Classics Endowment Fund, and the School of History. This was the third in an annual series of workshops instituted by Dr McEvoy and members of the ANU Late Antiquity and Medieval Group, which has previously held colloquia on Women, Gender, and Authority (2023) and Women, Gender and Violence (2024).

This year’s event explored different manifestations and perceptions of queenship across time and space, from the Hellenistic world to 19th-century Australia. Our keynote speaker was Dr Alex McAuley from the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, who presented The Other Side of the Dynastic Coin: Rethinking Queenship and Gender in the Hellenistic World.

ANU researchers presented a range of fascinating papers, including:

• “Did the Early Romans Have Queens?” (Professor Caillan Davenport)
• “Queenly Patronage in Early Byzantium: Anicia Juliana’s Churches in Constantinople” (Dr Meaghan McEvoy)
• “The ‘Villainous’ Dowagers, the Female Emperor, and the Anarcho-Feminist Critique of Queenship in China” (Assoc. Prof. Esther Klein)
• “Queens of Mallorca: Fighting at Sea and Ruling on Islands” (Dr Romney David Smith)
• “Queenly Intercessors and Nuns' Self-Image in the Sybil Embroidery from Heiningen (1517)” (Julie Hotchin)
• “1566: Mary Stuart, the Baptism of James VI, and Religious Affiliation as Spectacle” (Prof. Ros Smith)
• “From Accession to Alliance: Queen Anne’s First 100 Days and the Repair of Anglo-Portuguese Relations” (Fleur Goldthorpe)
• “First Nations’ Uses of Queen Victoria: Claims and Contestations” (Prof. Maria Nugent)

Our session chairs, Dr Karen Fox, Dr Karen Downing, and History PhD candidate Alexandra Kujanpaa, led the discussions. The presentations brought together scholars across ANU in History, Classics, English, and the Centre for Asia and the Pacific. The workshop highlighted methodological issues in researching and teaching queenship, as well as themes including Roman politics, Chinese empresses, numismatic and epigraphic sources, queenly patronage and intercession, the use of religious ritual, queens in international relations, and Indigenous perspectives.

As part of his visit to ANU, generously funded by Professor Caillan Davenport’s Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT240100071), Dr McAuley also led a warmly received HDR masterclass for advanced undergraduate, honours, and HDR students in History and Classics on the methodological challenges of researching ancient queenship.