Dr Zajko has wide-ranging research interests in the reception of classical myth and literature, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, and in psychoanalytic theory, feminist thought and literary empathy. She has published on a variety of ancient and modern authors including Homer, Aeschylus and Ovid, Shakespeare, Keats, Melanie Klein, James Joyce, Freud, Mary Shelley, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves and Neil Gaiman.

She is currently working on projects about globalized cultures and contemporary mythmaking, about Anne Carson's use of myth and about Simon Armitage's classicism.

Dr Zajko was for two years Programme Director for the interedisiplinary BA and MLib Liberal Arts programmes in the Faculty of Arts.  She  teaches undergraduate courses on Sex and Gender, Receptions of Greek Tragedy, and Approaches to Myth; this last unit involves a contemporary myth-making project where students work together in teams to create and film a modern version of a Classical myth. 

She currently supervises PhD students writing about gender and death in Greek tragedy, Virginia Woolf and tragedy, and Alice Oswald and Christopher Logue. She would be interested in supervising graduate dissertations on aspects of the reception of Classical myth and literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Contact: V.Zajko@bristol.ac.uk