Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

Name

CRSid

Research Interests

Jacob Abolafia

ja455

Civil religion and "political theology", political philosophy ancient and modern, philosophical hermeneutics.

Carol Atack

cwa24

Ancient political thought and philosophy, especially Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates; Greek historiography; reception of Plato and Greek political thought in contemporary political thought and philosophy; theories and philosophy of history. Thesis: 'The discourse of kingship in classical Athenian political thought'.

Tom Bolton

tb478

Ancient Greek sociolinguistics; Greek dialects, language change, orthography, and identity.

Michael Carroll

mjc232

Aeschylus; tragic language in performance context; metaphor; stylistics. Thesis title: The Style of Aeschylus.

Siobhan Chomse

smc203

Tacitus; Lucan; traumatic history; the sublime; memory and memorial; historical theory.

Camila Condilo

cdsc2

Oikos and Genos in Herodotus' narrative.

Patrick Cook

prc36

Roman cultural history from the late Republic until the age of Constantine, with a particular focus on representations of the bodies of politicians.

Eleri Cousins

ehc35

Roman archaeology and epigraphy; religion in the North-West provinces; community-formation in frontier zones.  Thesis: Ritual in the communities of Roman Britain.

Bogdan Cristea

gbc22

Cicero, classical rhetoric, oratorical rhythm, Latin stylistics and metrics, the relationship between pragmatic context and prose rhythm, the influence of rhythm on syntax and semantics.

Rachel Cunliffe

rmbc3

Feminism and construction of gender in Ovid; agency, control, and manipulation in Roman elegy.

Robrecht Decorte

rpjmd2

Diachronic evolution of Latin; Oscan; Language and identity; Roman Law. PhD Thesis: Evolution, characteristics and impact of Latin legal language.

Roeland P-J E Decorte

rpjed2

Aegean Bronze Age studies; rise of complex societies in EBA and Neolithic; Linear B; Minoan and Mycenaean political organisation; patterns in early glyptic; BA trade and maximalist models.

I specifically work with Minoan artefacts and the political implications of BA art.

Benjamin Folit-Weinberg

bfj32

The figure of the 'way', 'road' in Homer, the Presocratics, and Athenian tragedy.

Clare Foster

clef3

Theatricality in antiquity; concepts of theatre pre- and post- 'modern drama'; history and theory of translation/adaptation; performance as paradigm in pre- and post-print eras; the concept of the 'classic'.

Annika Franzen

af452

Roman literature and literary theory; historiography; conceptualization of history in Roman literature and culture, esp. between Republic and Empire.

Y.N. Gershon

yng21

Constructions of Greek socio-political identity under Rome particularly in historiography and rhetoric; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Dio Chrysostom.

Tom Geue

tag32

Latin imperial literature, especially Juvenal; autobiography; politics; realism; mediocrity; anonymity. Thesis title: 'Satirist without Qualities: Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity'.

James Halladay

jh868

Iconography, particularly in relation to Greek pottery; representations of military equipment, slavery and myth-historical parallels. Thesis: 'Propaganda' in Late-Archaic and Early Classical Attic Vases.

Benjamin Harriman

bch27

Ancient Philosophy, in particular the Presocratics; fragments and textual criticism. Thesis: A Study of Melissus.

Stephen Harrison

sh516

The working title of my PhD is 'The diffusion of Achaemenid concepts of kingship'. The basic idea is to examine how (if at all) Achaemenid ideas about kingship affected monarchy in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on Macedon and the Hellenistic kingdoms. The current project grew out of undergraduate and MPhil work on Alexander the Great, and reflects my broader interest in kingship and, particularly, the relationship between ruler and subject.

Naoya Iwata

ni237

Ancient Philosophy, especially Plato's middle dialogues. The main topic for my thesis is the role of the Form of the Good in his epistemology and ontology. This year I am focusing on Plato's method of hypothesis in relation to Greek mathematics.

Claire Rachel Jackson

crj33

The ancient novel; Second Sophistic literature; fiction theory; ambiguity between factual/fictional discourse; self-conscious fictionality; the relationship between Greek and Roman novels; theatricality and visual spectacle in fiction.

Anna Judson

apj31

Writing systems of the Bronze Age Aegean, in particular the development and use of the Linear B script. Provisional thesis title: The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B.

Carl Mazurek

carm3

Livy; Roman historiography; Early and Middle-Republican Rome; pre-Roman Italy, especially Campania.  PhD Title: Commentary on Livy 23.

Katherine McDonald

km440

Ancient sociolinguistics; Pre-Roman Southern Italy; Italic languages (Oscan, Umbrian); Greek speakers in Italy.

Paul McMullen

pim22

Ancient Greek and Near-Eastern religions; the construction of orthodoxy; concepts of belief; Presocratic epistemology; Platonic theology; allegory and the imaginary; ancient and modern historiography; Herodotus; Classical Greek history

James McNamara

jdm71

Roman historiography and rhetoric, Trajanic period. Reception: classics in modern Germany, history of Latin teaching. Thesis title: Oratory in Tacitus.

Francesca Middleton

fcm27

Ancient revision of Homer; theories of translation, recension, cento + reception more broadly; text as material; Greek literary culture under the Roman Empire.  Working title: ‘Rewriting Homer in Antiquity.’

Caroline Musgrove

cjm211

Ancient medicine, gynaecology and embryology in Early Christian texts; Early Christian perceptions of midwives. Also more broadly: Hippocratic and Soranic medicine; Christianity in late antiquity; gender and women in the ancient world; and the reign of Julian the Apostate. PhD Thesis: 'Women and Generation in a world of Pagans and Christians'.

Ollie Passmore

ohp20

Homer, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, Greek lyric; the 'poetics of epistemology'; visuality, performance, and pragmatic linguistic approaches to literature, particularly deixis; texts and space.

Rhodes Pinto

rp451

Motion and self-motion in ancient philosophy; Platonic and Aristotelian physics, metaphysics, and teleology; cosmology in the ancient philosophers; textual criticism.

Hannah Price

hp280

Cultural history of the city of Rome, in particular the Forum Romanum, as both a physical (what took place there, how and why?) and conceptual space (how did the Romans think about the Forum, what myths did they tell?). Also interested in the history of Roman archaeology and the modern reception of antiquity.

Joshua Pugh Ginn

jgp25

Plutarch on Roman History; historiography of the Roman Republic; ethics, moralising and historical narrative.

Christopher Roser

cnr29

Philosophy.

Matthew Scarborough

mjcs2

Greek and Italic Languages and Linguistics; Greek Dialectology and Epigraphy (including Mycenaean); Indo-European Comparative Linguistics and Philology; Theory and Methodology in Historical Linguistics. Thesis Topic:  The Linguistic History of the Aeolic Dialects.

Rob Sing

rjs234

Athenian democracy; fourth-century rhetoric; public finance and innovation in financial organisation; evolution of leadership within the democracy; transition of Athenian politics/economy after the Social War. Thesis title TBA.

Nick Soderberg

ns368

The Bronze Age Mediterranean; Architectural perspectives on Cretan palatial society; Minoan ritual and religion; Minoan interactions around the Mediterranean.

Silvia Speriani

ss2125

I am focusing on Vergil for my final and, in particular, I am studying the role of the term umbra in the Aeneid . It is my belief that the Vergilian uses and connotations of this term are specifically invested with semantic values which cannot be found the immediate Homeric model where, most of the times, the concept of shadow is merely reduced to epithets and formulae. What I am trying to do is to search where the peculiarly Vergilian way to employ the umbrae may came from. In particular, I am looking at the Greek tragedy where I have found relevant influences came to Vergil, in this respect. Then, it might be worthwhile taking in account the Latin tragic production, too.

Charles Sturge

cjs203

My interests lie in the study of the Greek Mainland during the Aegean Bronze age, with particular reference to the Mycenaean Palatial and the Submycenaean periods, the rise of 'proto-states' in the Early Bronze Age. I am also interested in the interactions of both Minoan and Mycenaean Palatial societies in the Cyclades.

Christina Tsaknaki

ckt29

A commentary on Ovid's Tristia, book V.

Daniel Unruh

dbu20

History of political thought, focussing on Classical Greek ideas about relationships between citizens and monarchs.

Astrid Van Oyen

av360

Material culture studies, Roman archaeology, Roman socio-economics, terra sigillata. dissertation title: 'Doing sigillata, enacting similarity and difference. An archaeological application of material semiotics'.

Laura Viidebaum

lv261

Greek Drama and performance culture; ancient theories of rhetoric and the practice of oratory; Greek political thought; literary criticism, ancient and modern.

Rodrigo Vivas Pinto

rv282

My research scheme, as an interdisciplinary approach, aims at examining how C. G. Jung's (mis)appropriation of classical myths and authors legitimized his reformulation of dynamic psychology.

Ellisif Wasmuth

ew419

Plato's concept(s) of self-knowledge and the role of self-knowledge in Plato's ethics and epistemology.

George Watson

gcw30

Greek and Roman numismatics, in particular the Roman provincial coinage. Use of coins as evidence for cultural history.

Robin Whelan

rew47

Late antiquity; Vandal Africa; Christianity and the Church; orthodoxy and heresy; ‘Arianism’; barbarian successor kingdoms; late-antique North Africa. Thesis title: ‘Contesting orthodoxy in Vandal Africa’.

Jingyi Zhao (Jenny)

jz292

Ancient philosophy; comparative studies of ancient Greece and early China; ethics. Thesis: comparing Aristotle and Xunzi on shame, human nature and the good life.