The August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum (ABAZ) initiated and coordinated interdisciplinary research and teaching activities and projects in the fields of classical studies and related disciplines within Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The ABAZ seeked to promote dialog between antiquity and modernity within the university community, bridging the two with lectures and discussion series, workshops on topics like digitalization in ancient studies, interdisciplinary courses and international cooperation projects as well as in its activities for school children and its support of a Studierendenkolleg, a forum for exchange and joint activities run by and for university students.

The ABAZ is being integrated into the Berliner Antike-Kolleg (BAK)

As a way of concentrating resources and to increase the center’s reach throughout Berlin, the governing bodies of the ABAZ and the BAK have decided to integrate the center into the BAK. Professor Philip van der Eijk, a  member of the BAK executive board since 2019, is supporting the merger process, which is expected to continue through 31 December 2020. The successful formats used by the ABAZ in the past years will be retained within the new structures.

On the ABAZ’s history and August-Boeckh, for whom the center was named

The ABAZ was founded in 2005 as an interdisciplinary center at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, along with SFB 644 “Transformationen der Antike” (Collaborative Research Centre “Transformations of Antiquity”). The center played an active role in the establishment of the Excellence Cluster Topoi in 2007.

The ABAZ takes its name from August Boeckh (1785–1867), one of the first classicists at what was then the University of Berlin. In his publications and lectures, particularly those published posthumously in Encyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften, Boeckh advocated the comprehensive study of antiquity in its entirety, thus becoming one of the founding fathers of the interdisciplinary approach to ancient studies.