Dr. Philippa (Pippa) M. Steele, Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) Project at the University, has been made into a Lego figure by the group Lego Classicists in honour of all her work in Classics and Outreach (and Lego!).
As Principal Investigator of the CREWS Project, Dr. Steele is working primarily on the writing systems of Middle-Late Bronze Age Crete and Greece. This involves studying the Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B scripts, looking at the contexts in which they were used and aiming to reconstruct the ways in which they are related to each other. Another aspect of this research involves studying the adaptation of writing systems for a new language from a theoretical point of view, and to aid this research she is also working on the development of the Greek alphabet from Phoenician and the spread of alphabetic systems around the Mediterranean. Linear B and the Greek alphabet provide a particularly useful point of comparison because they are both scripts that were borrowed and adapted to write the same language, Greek.
Pippa, through the CREWS Project, has been involved in International Lego Classicism Day since 2019 and every year she has brought together extremely complex thoughts and ideas through the use of LEGO in a way that is astounding for students and classicists alike.
Well done for this amazing recognition Pippa!