Professor Nicholas Zair
- Professor of the Italic Languages
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Location
- Peterhouse, Trumpington St, Cambridge, CB2 1RD
About
I read Literae Humaniores (Classics) at Oxford, before doing an MPhil and DPhil in Comparative Philology and General Linguistics. I came to Cambridge in 2010 as a Research Fellow at Peterhouse, and then a Research Associate in the Classics Faculty, before being appointed Lecturer in 2016, Senior Lecturer in 2020, and Professor in 2025.
Research
I'm interested in the history and development of classical languages, especially their phonology and morphology, and the writing systems used to represent them; I focus in particular on the Italic languages, including Latin, Oscan, Umbrian and South Picene. I've also worked on aspects of the (pre-)history of Celtic languages, and the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. I welcome enquiries from potential graduate students who may be interested in working on topics of this sort.