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Faculty of Classics

 
Greek Literature

Biography

After a failed attempt to become a professional ice hockey goalie, I studied at the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and then at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. I first came to Cambridge as the WHD Rouse Junior Research Fellow in Classics at Christ’s College and returned for good after serving as Leventis Research Fellow in Ancient Greek at Merton College, Oxford.

 

Thanks to the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, I will be on research leave from October 2025 to October 2027.

Research

Greek Literature (especially poetry)

Publications

Key publications: 

Pindar and the Poetics of Permanence (OUP, 2018).

With Adrian Kelly: Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece (CUP, 2024).

With Giacomo Fedeli: Writing Literary History in the Greek and Roman World (CUP, 2024).

The Cambridge Companion to Pindar (CUP).

‘Placing Aphrodite: Alcaeus fr. 296b and Horace C. 4.1’: ZPE 189 (2014): 53-63.

‘Alcman 3 PMGF and Horace C. 2.8’: ZPE 192 (2014): 23-8.

‘Zeus and the Maidens: Pindar fr. 94b.31-7’: ZPE 192 (2014): 31-3.

‘Alcaeus 140’: CPhil 110 (2015): 353-60.

‘Simonides 21 IEG2’: ZPE 200 (2016): 33-5.

‘Sappho 44: Trojan Myth and Literary History’: Mnemosyne 70 (2017): 740-57.

‘Borrowing Sappho’s Napkins: Sappho 101, Catullus 12, and Theocritus 28’: HSCP 109 (2017): 237-60.

‘Reading Agamemnon’s Mind in Euripides’ Hecuba’: Omnibus 73 (2017): 15-18.

‘Event and Artefact: The Hymn to Apollo, Archaic Lyric, and Early Greek Literary History’: in Textual Events: Performance and the Lyric in Early Greece ed. F. Budelmann and T. Phillips (2018): 151-71.

‘Heirs and Educators: Pindar in the Epitaph for Bion’: Hermes 146 (2018): 107-9.

‘Alcaeus’, ‘Alcman’, ‘Ibycus’: The Literary Encyclopedia (www.litencyc.com).

‘Pindar and the Epic Cycle’: JHS 138 (2018): 182-201.

‘Schools, Reading and Poetry in the Early Greek World’: CCJ 65 (2019): 150-72.

‘The View from Olympus: The Muses’ Song in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo’: CQ 72 (2020): 1-9.

‘The Odyssey and its Predecessors’: Omnibus 81 (2021): 6-8. 

‘Staging Literary History in Old Comedy’: CPhil 116 (2021): 305-35.

 ‘Of Armpits and the Origins of Comedy: Aristophanes fr. 264 and 265’: GRBS 61 (2021): 249-62.

‘Classicising “Pindar”: Quotation, Canonisation and Early Reception’: Trends in Classics 13 (2021): 363-88.

‘Theognis’ Unoriginal Didactic Failure’: in Phaidimos Hektor. Studi in onore di Willy Cingano per il suo 70mo compleanno ed. E. Prodi and S. Vecchiato (2021): 133-54.

‘Alcaeus’: in The Blackwell Companion to Greek Lyric ed. L. Swift (2022): 275-89.

‘Xenophanes’ Poetic Travels’: AJP 144 (2023): 503-28.

'Alcidamas and the the Idea of Literary History: P. Mich. Inv. 2754': CPhil 118 (2023): 440-58.

‘Epic and Lyric’: in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Epic ed. E. Greensmith (2024): 41-57.

‘“If One Knows What is to Come”: Ethics, Audience, and Eschatology in Pindar’s Olympian 2’: JHS 114 (2024): 1-17.

With Shaul Tor: ‘Heraclitus on First (and Further) Hearings’: Phronesis 69 (2024): 383-401.

With Giacomo Fedeli: ‘Introduction’ in Fedeli and Spelman (2024): 1-17.

‘Writing the Beginnings of Greek Literary History’: in Fedeli and Spelman (2024): 21-39.

With Adrian Kelly: ‘Introduction’: in Kelly and Spelman (2024): 1-28.

‘Invoking Homer: The Catalogue of Ships and the Early Reception of the Iliad’: in Kelly and Spelman (2024): 118-37.

‘Xenophanes B6 D-K: Ethics, Reciprocity, and the Mystery of the Travelling Meat’: CQ (2024).

Teaching and Supervisions

Research supervision: 

I would be delighted to hear from potential research students interested in similar aspects and areas of early Greek literature. 

Assistant Professor in Classics
Fellow of Christ's College
Takes PhD students
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations

Latest news

The Kennedy Professorship of Latin

13 June 2025

The Board of Electors to the Kennedy Professorship of Latin invite applications for this Professorship from persons whose work falls within the general field of the Professorship to take up appointment on 1 September 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. For more information see details here . Closing date: 8 September...

Masters Student wins Roman Society MA dissertation prize

28 May 2025

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Naomi Norden (King’s College) has won joint first place in the Roman Society MA dissertation prize for her 2024 MPhil thesis 'Creating complexity: Paratextuality and Intertextuality in the Works of Ausonius'. Congratulations Naomi!

St John's College Newell Lecture

27 May 2025

This year the St John's College Newell Lecture was delivered by Jackie Murray on the topic of Race and Injustice in Plato's Republic. You can watch a recording of the event here:

Marie Curie / BA postdoctoral fellowship schemes

19 May 2025

The Faculty of Classics invites potential applicants to the MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) and the British Academy’s Postdoctoral Fellowship schemes within areas relevant to our research clusters: Greek and Latin Literature, Greek and Roman Philosophy, Ancient History, C lassical Art and Archaeology, Classical and...