Victor Alonso Troncoso

Víctor Alonso Troncoso was born in 1957 in Vigo (Spain), the largest fishing port in Europe and a historically a typical producer city. The first European capital he knew was Lisbon, the second Rome, and the third London, where his earliest relevant stay abroad to place in 1973, to learn English. He studied History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, la casa di Sa'Iacopo, where he graduated in 1979 with distinction. He then became a lecturer at the University of Madrid (UAM), Faculty of Arts, and a fellow at the Colegio Mayor "César Carlos", an institution for candidates who wish to pursue a career in the high State Administration. In 1984 he earned his PhD from UAM in Ancient History, summa cum laude with distinction. He was a lecturer at the University of Valencia (1983-1985) and became an associate professor at Madrid in 1987. Since 1995 he has been Professor of Ancient History at the University of Corunna.

Professor Alonso Troncoso has also had the benefit of a research stay at the University of Heidelberg (Faculty of Oriental and Classical Studies), during the academic year 1981-1982. Other fellowships include membre libre of the Casa de Velázquez, the French School at Madrid, where he lived from 1986 to 1988; his Humboldt scholarship at the Universities of Munster, Institute of Ancient History (1996/1997, 2002), and Berlin, Institute of Classical Archaeology (2005, 2007). He is also a member of the academic committee of "Sosipolis", the International Institute of Ancient Hellenic History (Pyrgos), since 2004.

A philhellene, he has developed two main lines of research: political history and international law in Archaic and Classical Greece; and Hellenistic kingship, especially from Alexander to the Epigoni. His dissertation, Neutralidad y neutralismo en la guerra del Peloponeso (Madrid 1987), was both a history of the abstention from war during that period and the first systematic investigation on neutrality as an institution of classical Greek diplomacy. Since then, he has continued to research the relations between poleis above all military alliances and has published a series of articles on the subject, the most recent of which is "Olympie et la publication des traités internationaux" (RDE 2, 2012). His most recent book publications are DIADOCOS THS BASILEIAS: La figura del sucesor en la realeza helenística (Madrid 2005), as editor, and After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi (Oxford 2013), as coeditor.

His project while at ISAW is The Zoology of Hellenistic Kingship: From Alexander the Great to the Epigoni (336 - c. 250 BC). The investigation will focus on three groups of rulers: the older generation of Philip II, the generation of Alexander and his younger successors, and the next group of kings, the Epigoni. The focus will be on the Ptolemies, the Seleucids and the Antigonids, but other contemporary royal houses, from Iran and India, will also be taken into account. Above all, lions, eagles, horses and elephants have been chosen to illustrate the real and symbolic connections of the reigning dynasties with the animal world - or the animal society.