Biography
Research Professor in the Faculty of Classics, and Principal Investigator of the UKRI-funded project 'Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems' (VIEWS, grant no. EP/X028240/1)
Research
As PI of the VIEWS project, I am currently directing research on visual aspects of writing, with a personal project focused on a cross-cultural study of writing direction and layout. I am particularly interested in broadening the outlook of grapholinguistics to better incorporate sociocultural and visual-cultural features of writing traditions, including ones that have been marginalised in writing systems studies. My previous publications have mainly focused on languages and writing systems of ancient Cyprus and the Aegean.
Publications
Books
Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean, Oxford 2023.
Writing around the Ancient Mediterranean: Practices and Adaptations, Oxford 2022, co-editor Philip J. Boyes.
The Early Greek Alphabets: Origin, Diffusion, Uses, Oxford 2021, co-editor Robert Parker.
The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxford 2021, co-editors Philip J. Boyes and Natalia Elvira Astoreca.
Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, co-editor Philip J. Boyes.
Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus, Cambridge 2018.
Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017.
A Linguistic History of Ancient Cyprus: The Non-Greek Languages, and their Relations with Greek, c.1600-300 BC, Cambridge 2013.
Syllabic Writing on Cyprus and its Context, Cambridge 2013.
Articles
‘The visual-cultural fit of writing systems’ in Haralambous, Y. (ed.) Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century /gʁafematik/ October 23–25, 2024, Proceedings, Part I, Brest: Fluxus Editions 2026, 15-46. https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-stee
Review article on Meletis, D. and Dürscheid, C. Writing Systems and Their Use. An Overview of Grapholinguistics: Kratylos 70 2026, 36-48. https://doi.org/10.29091/KRATYLOS/2025/1/5
‘Mount Hymettos: A holy place for writing’, Epigraphy Graffiti Iconography 1.1 2025, 8-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48619/egi.v1i1.A1224
‘Greece and Cyprus: regional approaches to the development of writing systems, traditions and practices’ in Alonso Déniz, A. (ed.) Contacts linguistiques en Grèce ancienne : diachronie et synchronie, Lyon 2024, 147-164.
'Scribal practices, syntax and morphology’ in Civitillo, M., Ferrara, S. and Meissner, T. (eds.) Cretan Hieroglyphic, Cambridge 2024, 119-133.
‘A comparative approach to methods of inscribing clay tablets: interaction and innovation in Cyprus and Ugarit’: in Bultrighini, I. and Anglicker, E.M. (eds.) Current Approaches to the Materiality of Texts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Brepols, Turnhout 2023, 35-52 With Philip J. Boyes.
‘Material entanglements of writing practices in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus’ in Steel, L. (ed.) Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age, special issue of Sustainability 12 2020, 1-17. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410671)
‘Script and literacy’ in Lemos, I.S. and Kotsonas, A. (eds.) A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, Oxford (Blackwell Companion) 2019, 247-69.
'The development of Greek alphabets: Fluctuations and standardisations’ in Steele, P.M. and Boyes, P.J. (eds.) Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, 125-49.
‘Linear A and Linear B: Structural and contextual concerns’ in Nosch, M-.L. and Landenius Enegren, H. (eds.) Aegean Scripts. Proceedings of the 14th Mycenological Colloquium 2-6 September, Copenhagen 2015 Incunabula Graeca Vol. CV, 1, Rome 2017, 99-114. With Torsten Meißner.
‘Writing ‘systems’: Literacy and the transmission of writing in non-administrative contexts’ in Jasink, E.M., Weingarten, J. and Carraro, F. (eds.) Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas, Periploi 9, 81-100 - in press.
‘From Linear B to Linear A: The problem of the backward projection of sound values’ in Steele, P.M. (ed.) Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017, 93-110. With Torsten Meißner.
'A linguistic approach to population movements to ancient Cyprus' in Maguire, R. and Chick, J. (eds.) Approaching Cyprus, Cambridge 2016, 2-17.
‘Aegean and Cypriot script reforms: Ruptures and continuities’, BICS 59.1 2016, 136-7.
'Distinguishing between Cypriot scripts: Steps towards establishing a methodology’, Kadmos 53 2014, 129-48.
'The /d/, /t/, /l/ and /r/ series in Linear A and B, Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary', forthcoming in Pasiphae 8 2014, 189-96.
'The Greek Writing Systems', in G.K. Giannakis (ed.) Encyclopedia of Greek Language and Linguistics, Leiden 2013/4.
'The Diversity of the Cypro-Minoan Corpus' in Carlier, P. et al. (eds.) Études mycéniennes 2010. Actes du XIIIe colloque international sur les textes égéens, Pisa-Rome 2012, 537-544.
''Legality' and Mycenaean Scribes' in Kyriakidis, E. (ed.), Proceedings of the International Colloquium “The Inner Workings of the Mycenaean Bureaucracy”, University of Kent, Canterbury, 19-21 September 2008, Pasiphae 5, Pisa-Rome 2011, 119-26.
'Eteocypriot: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence', in Georgiou, A. (ed.), Cyprus: an island culture. Society and Social Relations from the Bronze Age to the Venetian Period, Oxford 2011, 122-32.
''Gaps' in Literacy: Social responses to economic crisis in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean', Archaeological Review from Cambridge 26.1 2011, 53-63.
'A New Archaic and Possibly Cypriot Inscription from Cilicia', Kadmos 49 2010, 127-32. With Markus Egetmeyer.
'Methodology in Mycenaean Prosopography: The Use of Names as Evidence', Kadmos 48 2009, 93-106.
'A Comparative Look at Mycenaean and Near Eastern Bureaucracies: 'Bilateral' Documentation in the Linear B Archives?', Kadmos 47 2008, 31-49.
Teaching and Supervisions
Available for supervision on topics with relevance to the VIEWS project (particularly writing systems studies).
Graduate supervision and examination in Greek and Latin linguistics and epigraphy and Mycenaean epigraphy, language and history.
