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The Hercules Project aimed to chart and account for the significance in western culture of the classical hero Hercules, from late antiquity via the Renaissance to the present day.

Building on the success of the 2013 Hercules: a Hero for All Ages conference, Stage 2 of Emma Stafford's Hercules project was supported by an AHRC Networking (2016-2018). This facilitated the development of a series of four publications on various aspects of the post-classical reception of Herakles-Hercules, via meetings between the editorial teams and a further conference, Celebrating Hercules in the Modern World, held at Leeds 7-9 June 2017. Three volumes of papers from these conferences (with further invited contributions) were published between February and December 2020; a fourth is published in August 2024.

The international network of scholars established by the two conferences is continually being consolidated and added to via the JISC mailing list Hercules: a hero for all ages: anyone interested in post-classical receptions of Herakles-Hercules is welcome to join!

You might also like to follow the project on X (Twitter) @Hercules_Leeds or as a friend of Hercules Stafford on Facebook.