Professor Marianne McDonald was trained in classics and music, taught for many years at the University of California, Irvine, and is now Professor of Classics and Theatre at the University of California, San Diego. She is most well-known for her work on ancient Greek drama, mythology, and modern versions of ancient classics in film, plays and opera, but her poems, plays, and translations have also been widely published. Her latest books include Sing Sorrow: Classics in Opera, and Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy.
Dr. McDonald founded two projects that have revolutionized studies in Classics and Irish literature, about which she lectures nationally and internationally. The first is the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a computer project which makes available as software and on computers all of Greek literature up to 600 A.D; the second is a similar project begun for the history of the Irish language and its literature (Thesaurus Linguarum Hiberniae). The Royal Irish Academy directs this project with the cooperation of the University of Cork, the University of Dublin, and universities throughout the world. She also helped shape the Japanese Studies program at UCSD, which is one of the reasons that this campus was selected for the Pacific Basin study program (IRPS). In addition, she is the founder of the renowned McDonald Center at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, whose success rate is among the highest in the nation in the treatment of drug and alcohol abuse.
She is a member of many boards, including The American School of Classical Studies. She has received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters (Honoris Causa) from the American College of Greece, the Archeological Association of Athens, the University of Athens, and the University of Dublin. She also is one of the few women to have been elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Among other awards, she has received the Order of the Phoenix from the Prime Minister of Greece, the UCI Medal, Civis Universitatis award from UCSD, gold medals from the mayors of Athens and Piraeus, a plaque of recognition from the University of Thessaloniki, and The Gold Aeschylus Award from Italy. She has six children, a black belt in karate, and plays classical piano and harp.
