Current and incoming PhD Students
Here are some profiles from current postgraduates.
Alice Bastianelli
Alica has just completed her first-year of her PhD on Art and Ecphrasis in the Younger Philostratus. She is funded by a Walston Studentship from the Faculty of Classics.
I first came to Cambridge in 2020 to start an undergraduate degree in classics after completing Liceo Classico in Italy. The interdisciplinary nature of the 3-year course allowed me to study not just language and literature but also art, archaeology and philosophy, and I soon became interested in the interactions between material culture and texts. Willing to further explore this topic, after my BA, I completed my MPhil here and then started my PhD last October.
As my area of interest lies at the intersection between different media and disciplines, the Classics Faculty in Cambridge is the ideal place to pursue my scholarly interests. The research expertise and the specialist resources available in the faculty, combined with the vast array of seminars organised every week and the thriving Classics community, have supported my work by providing occasions to find out about new research but also engage with topics that might not necessarily be directly related to my research project. Studying at the Classics faculty in Cambridge offered me the opportunity to specialize while working on the doctoral dissertation under the supervision of world-leading academics, but also to pursue a wide range of scholarly interests by exploring areas outside of the thesis topic.
Throughout my time in Cambridge, the Classics faculty also allowed me to travel to Greece and Italy. Thanks to the generous funding from the faculty, I was able to participate in archaeological fieldworks and a trip to Athens as part of the MPhil series of seminars. These have been an invaluable part of my experience of Classics at Cambridge, allowing me to get hands-on experience and showing me all the facets of what it means to do archaeology. Not only did I get to dig and visit some of the case studies I had learned about during my degrees, but I also put into practice archaeological methods and experienced how archaeology can answer grand questions about the past, analysing details to see the bigger picture. Furthermore, thanks to the faculty studentship funding my PhD, I will be able to spend three months in ‘classical’ lands, which is an invaluable opportunity for my research and something I am really looking forward to.
My PhD now looks at the Younger Philostratus’ Imagines, situating this early fourth-century AD text within its rhetorical, literary, artistic and archaeological contexts. In my first year, I have investigated areas of ancient culture I had never explored before, and, thanks to reading groups and research seminars, I was able to broaden my horizons. I am looking forward to continuing my studies in the supportive community of academics and postgraduate students here in the faculty!
Anniko Firman
Anniko has just completed the Cambridge MPhil and is starting a PhD on late antique Greek epic, funded by the Cambridge Trust and Jesus College.
Cambridge has felt like home to me even before I started my studies here as an undergraduate in 2021. When I first visited the city for an open day back in 2018, I immediately fell in love with its dazzling historical architecture, the vibrant town centre and especially the abundance of open green spaces. Even now, entering my fifth year at Cambridge (how time flies!), I have never stopped appreciating just how special this place is. The Faculty of Classics is without doubt one of the foremost centres of classical study in the world, and the sheer number of resources it houses – from the well-stocked library (open 24/7 to graduate students), to the cast gallery, to the daily research seminars across all sub-disciplines of Classics – is almost unparallelled.
Most of all, I’ve found the system of small-group teaching in the form of supervisions to be truly invaluable. It’s the unfailing enthusiasm and support of my undergraduate supervisors that turned me from a slightly lost fresher with no intention of pursuing an MPhil, let alone a PhD, into someone set on an academic career, having found a passion for Homer and his reception in antiquity. The MPhil, with its focus on independent research, allowed me to further pursue my interests in Homer, late antique literature, literary theory and textual criticism that I had developed as an undergraduate. My PhD focuses on the poetics of infinity in Greek epic, exploring how poems can imagine the absence of the spatio-temporal and formal limits that govern our engagement with the world around us. I’m looking forward to starting to teach myself this year, and hope to both inspire the same love for the field that I found as an undergraduate and learn from my students in turn.
Outside of work, Cambridge offers many (perhaps too many) opportunities for relaxation and socialisation. I’ve found both the graduate community at the Faculty and my College MCR to be a thriving social scene – the latter in particular has given me the chance to meet with students working in other fields. Above all, sport has played an important role during my time at Cambridge, both at University and College level. It allows me to take a break from my work and has given me friendships that will last a lifetime. In every aspect, coming to Cambridge to study Classics has been a decision that I have never once regretted, and I am very much looking forward to all the new experiences four more years here will give me.
David Luchford
David completed his MPhil at Cambridge in 2023 and has just finished the first year of his PhD in ancient philosophy. He is funded by the Faculty of Classics and Corpus Christi College.
I completed my BA in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in 2020, graduating with First-Class Honours. During my BA, I became particularly interested in Plato, and my Advisor, Catherine Rowett, said that I should learn Ancient Greek if I wished to study Plato at a higher level. I thus started learning Greek during my BA: I attended the JACT Greek Summer School three times, and I independently studied Greek almost every day for several years.
While working as a Teaching Assistant at a primary school, I applied for the MPhil in Classics at Cambridge, which I completed with a Distinction grade in 2023. My MPhil was generously funded by the Cambridge Trust and the Clare Hall Blakes Fund. I successfully completed an unseen Greek translation exam as part of my MPhil, and my MPhil thesis pertained to an understudied argument for asceticism in Plato’s Phaedo.
During my MPhil, I applied for teacher training in Classics, primarily Latin, and I thus taught myself Latin in preparation for this, using the GCSE and A-Level textbooks in conjunction with a Latin dictionary. I successfully completed my teacher training and attained QTS in 2024, having gained lots of experience of teaching Latin and Greek in secondary schools. However, during my teacher training, I determined that I would prefer to teach at a university and thus applied for the PhD in Classics at Cambridge, which I am now in the first year of, having been generously allocated funding by the Faculty of Classics and Corpus Christi College.
My PhD research focuses on the metaphysics of Plato’s Phaedo – in particular, the natures of perceptibility, corporeality, compositeness, changeability, dissolubility, and their opposites, as well as the relationships between these properties, within the dialogue. These properties are fundamental to the Phaedo’s metaphysics but a comprehensive account of their natures and the relationships between them has not yet been given.
In my spare time, I am learning several modern foreign languages, including Russian, Polish, and German. In addition, I work as a Latin language tutor, and I have a YouTube channel where I teach Ancient Greek.
Michael Okyere Asante
Michael is about to start his second year of his PhD in ancient philosophy. He is funded by a Cambridge International Scholarship.
Before coming to Cambridge, I completed both a BA in Classics with Sociology and an MPhil in Classics at the University of Ghana, where I also instructed undergraduate students. What initially drew me to Cambridge was the collaboration that had developed between the Faculty and my home institution, the University of Ghana. Through this partnership (Classics Beyond Borders), I had the chance to visit Cambridge, deliver a paper on decolonising Classics and another on Plato’s Republic at a Classical Association conference, and engage with both faculty and students. I found the environment to be intellectually and genuinely welcoming of diverse perspectives and alternative approaches to the ancient world. I was also struck by the Faculty’s commitment to accessibility. At many institutions, limited training in ancient languages can be a barrier to pursuing graduate study. Cambridge takes a different approach. Where there is clear academic potential or a strong record of research and teaching, the Faculty makes it possible to enrol while receiving targeted support to develop language skills. That inclusive philosophy was an important factor in my decision to apply.
Since arriving, I’ve had access to excellent resources and guidance. I was assigned a Teaching Assistant who has helped me strengthen my command of ancient Greek and integrate it more confidently into my research. The Faculty has also introduced an Advanced Diploma to support students who, like me, did not have prior formal training in Greek or Latin but show strong potential to contribute to the field.
My doctoral research revisits the question of how Plato conceives the relationship between the individual and the polis in the Republic, using an Afro-communitarian lens. I draw on the work of Kwame Gyekye, a prominent Ghanaian philosopher best known for developing a theory of moderate communitarianism. Through this engagement, I hope to show how African philosophical traditions can open new ways of understanding key questions in Greek political thought. With the strong supervision I’ve received and the Faculty’s openness to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research, I’ve found Cambridge to be a fitting home for my project.
Sebastian Tyrrall
Sebastian first came to the Cambridge Classics Faculty as an undergraduate. He went on to complete an MPhil. He is now about to start the writing-up year of his doctorate in ancient history. He is funded by a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities.
For my PhD project, I am investigating the role of the non-human in Graeco-Roman historiography: natural phenomena, the gods, fate, and fortune. It was the calibre of its academics which first drew me to the Cambridge Classics Faculty. And indeed, discussions with my PhD supervisors, Robin Osborne and Ingo Gildenhard, have always proved stimulating. I go away from our meetings with a wealth of new ideas to think about.
The libraries at Cambridge are extremely well-stocked. Most things I want to read I can find in the Classics Faculty Library, where the librarians are friendly, helpful, and highly skilled. Obscurer works will almost always be in the University Library. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a book or article has been genuinely unavailable across the university. And in these cases, librarians have been keen to receive suggestions for new books to buy.
The research community in the Cambridge Classics Faculty is highly active. So many seminars take place in term-time on so many different topics that it would be impossible to attend them all. Classics graduates are also keen to organise their own seminars and reading groups and the Faculty is pleased to support these. For example, I have recently joined a student-led pedagogy reading group.
The Cambridge Classics Faculty has provided me with generous financial support to attend UK and international conferences, whether as a speaker or an attendee. I have also received plenty of opportunity to teach undergraduates, whether in language, literature, or history.
Every Cambridge student is also a member of a college, which is comprised of students and fellows from all academic disciplines. One of the great strengths of the college community is the curiosity and enthusiasm of its members for research of all kinds. I have talked about my research to interested scientists, philosophers, modern historians, and scholars of countless other disciplines, and learned in turn from them about their own research. That experience is not only interesting of itself, but also often provides the inspiration for new perspectives on my own field.