The manufacturing in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE will be explored by Dr Peter Acton in his lecture, next Thursday 17 March 2016, at the Greek Centre, in the Greek History and Culture Seminar series, offered for the sixth consecutive year by the Greek Community of Melbourne (GCM).

Peter Acton applies the modern business frameworks of competitive advantage and barriers to entry to explore manufacturing in ancient Athens. He shows which segments were capable of supporting large firms and which remained the province of the home craftsperson, and how much scope each offered for wealth creation and social advancement.

His analyses demonstrate that a very large proportion of the residents, at all social levels, had at least some engagement in manufacturing and that opportunities for casual engagement were fundamental to the workings of the Athenian democracy.

Peter Acton has a degree in Classics from Oxford and an MBA from Stanford, where he was a Harkness Fellow and an Arjay Miller Scholar. After working in industrial relations in the UK, he spent 20 years with The Boston Consulting Group in Europe and Australia and was Managing Partner of the Melbourne office from 1995-1999.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and of the Australian Institute of Management, a member of the Peter McCallum Research Committee and a Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation.

In 2010 he was awarded a PhD in Ancient History by the University of Melbourne. His book, Poiesis, on manufacturing in classical Athens, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.

His experience has convinced him that the contribution a humanities education can make to commerce, as well as to life more generally, needs to be better appreciated, and he is the Founding President of Humanities 21.

When: Thursday 17 March 2018, 7.00pm
Where: Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture (Mezzanine, 168 Lonsdale St., Melbourne)