Mai Musié
Dr Mai Musié is a British-Eritrean writer, academic, and knowledge exchange professional. Born in Asmara, Eritrea in 1981, she came to the UK as a child refugee of the Ethiopian-Eritrean civil war. Mai has spent the last three and half decades living, studying, and working in London, Swansea, Oxford, and Bristol.
She earned her PhD in Ancient History from Swansea University in 2019, focusing on race, ethnicity, and the representation of the “other” in Greek and Roman literature. Her scholarship interrogates how ancient authors constructed foreignness and Blackness, and how these narratives continue to shape modern understandings of identity, belonging, and cultural memory. Central to her work is a commitment to exploring the deep historical and mythological connections between the ancient Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa.
Mai has spent over a decade working across higher education and the charitable‑voluntary sector, designing and leading access, outreach, and widening participation programmes. She has collaborated with museums, heritage organisations, and community groups on projects that champion co‑curation, co‑production, and equitable partnerships between researchers and the communities whose histories they seek to understand. During her 2023–2024 Early Career Research Fellowship at the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London), Mai worked closely with Ethiopian‑Eritrean diaspora communities to explore themes of forced migration, exile, and Blackness through classical mythological stories centred on Black “Ethiopian” figures. This work created new spaces for dialogue between ancient narratives and contemporary experiences of displacement, trauma, resilience, and cultural identity. It also formed part of the intellectual foundation for her forthcoming book.
Mai’s first book, Forward with Classics (with Holmes‑Henderson and Hunt), introduced innovative approaches to classical reception and education. She is currently writing her second book, Perilous Journeys: Ancient and Modern Reflections on Memory, Migration, and Exile. Blending memoir with historical analysis, the book traces the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers from antiquity to the present day, from mythical wanderers and exiles to modern migrants navigating political borders and contested narratives of belonging. It aims to ignite conversations around race, migration, and cultural identity, revealing how intercontinental movement has shaped European cultures for millennia.
Beyond academia, Mai is a regular literary event host and chair, known for interviewing writers, thinkers, and public figures at festivals and cultural events across the UK. Her public engagement work has received numerous awards for its creativity, reach, and impact. She is a member of the PEN Eritrea in Exile network and has served as a trustee of Classics for All and the Roman Society, helping to shape national initiatives that broaden access to classical subjects and support more inclusive approaches to the ancient world.
Mai is a Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, and currently lives in Bristol with her partner, her two young children, and two older stepchildren.
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