Emma Dench Emma Dench Emma Dench is an English ancient historian, classicist, and academic. She has been McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University since 2014, and Dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences since 2018. She was previously Professor of Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and then Professor of Classics and of History at Harvard. Dench was born in York, Yorkshire, England, and grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. Her father was Jeffery Dench, a Shakespearean actor, and her mother, Betty, was a speech therapist. Her paternal aunt is Judi Dench, an award-winning film
Judi Dench in 2001, aged 65. They have one grandchild, Finty's son Sam Williams (born in 1997). Dench has been in a relationship with conservationist David Mills since 2010. During a 2014 interview with "The Times" magazine, she discussed how she never expected to find love again after her husband's death, "I wasn't even prepared to be ready for it. It was very, very gradual and grown up ... It's just wonderful." In early 2012, Dench discussed her macular degeneration, with one eye "dry" and the other "wet", for which she has been treated with injections into the eye. She said that