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 worldwide. In Simon Curtis' "My Week with Marilyn", which depicts the making of the 1957 film "The Prince and the Showgirl" starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, Dench played actress Sybil Thorndike. The film garnered largely positive reviews, and earned Dench a Best Actress in a Supporting Role nomination at the 65th BAFTA Awards. Dench's last film of 2011 was Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar", a biographical drama film about the career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, from the Palmer Raids onwards, including an examination of his private life as a closeted homosexual. Hand-picked by Eastwood