Dr Lea Niccolai
- Associate Professor in Classics (Late Antique and Early Byzantine History)
- Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics, Trinity College
Contact
About
I studied Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore and completed a second MA in Ancient Near East Studies, with a specialisation in Syriac language and literature, at the University of Pisa. After graduating with a PhD in Ancient History from King’s College, Cambridge (2020), I have been a Research Fellow at Peterhouse and a Teaching Associate in Ancient History at the Cambridge Classics Faculty.
Research
My research interrogates the role of culture (especially Neoplatonism) in promoting socio-political change in the later Roman empire. My first monograph, Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power: Constantine, Julian, and the Bishops on Exegesis and Empire (Cambridge 2023), explores the rise of what I call a fourth-century politics of interpretation through the lens of Emperor Julian and other imperial and episcopal writings.
I am currently co-editing with Dr Giulia Maltagliati (Cambridge) a volume on ancient theories of ignorance. I am generally interested in everything that relates to the history of the late antique Mediterranean and Near East, but I am especially fascinated by questions of methodology in late antique exegesis, historiography, and legislation; ancient theories of the mind and on the connection between human, animal, and divine reason; the cultural interaction between the Greco-Roman world and the ancient Near East; the history of Neoplatonism and its socio-cultural impact; and the reception of late antiquity in modern and contemporary literature.
Teaching and supervision
During the academic year 2023-24 I will be lecturing on Part IB, paper FC2/T4 (‘Res publica: inequality and social change in the Roman world’) and Part II, paper C4/P7 (‘The transformation of the Roman World, AD 284-476’). In Lent term I will also be co-directing Paper X3 (‘Christianity, Hellenism, and Empire’, Classics/Divinity). I have supervised dissertations and coursework on late antique history and literature (with a focus on imperial communication and self-image and the literature of the Eastern Roman empire) and on Neoplatonism between the second and fourth century CE, but I welcome all topics related to my research interests.