Department of Classics - Princeton University

I have wide-ranging interests in Greek and Roman social and cultural history. I received my B.A. in Classics at Harvard University (2005) with a senior thesis on dynastic succession and the transmission of imperial power in Tacitus' Annals, which also treated Tacitus' engagement with the annalistic tradition. I then pursued an MPhil in Ancient History at King's College, Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar (2005-6) where I did work primarily in Late Republican history, with papers on the politics of Cicero's literary production, a project on Sulla's gold coinage, and an MPhil thesis on the memory and legacy of the Social War. 

I am currently engaged in a PhD dissertation tentatively entitled "Legally Roman: Legal Culture and Imperial Rule in the Age of the Severi." This project examines the law as an aspect of Roman imperial culture through case studies in North Africa and Egypt in the Severan period, situated at the end of a long second century. Central to the thesis is the problem of modelling the relationship between legislation and the law as social practice - a problem that legal historians of Roman Egypt initially obviated by positing a strong dichotomy between imperial and local law (Reichsrecht and Volksrecht). Furthermore, issues of imperial culture and acculturation place the thesis in the ambit of the Romanization debate. 

In addition to my primary research interests in Roman imperial history and juristic papyrology, I have an outstanding project on Procopius' engagement with classical historiography, as well as papers and long-term research interests in Varro and Late Republican antiquarianism and in the social history of Epicurean philosophy. 

My teaching experience at Princeton includes two 4-week intensive tutorials in accelerated Latin for graduate students in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (2007 and 2008) and CLA 218: "The Roman Republic" (2009). I have also taught an introductory course in Roman Law ("Römisches Recht: eine Einführung") at the University of Konstanz (2011) during research time spent in Germany last academic year. I look forward to teaching Latin 108: "The Origins of Rome: Livy and Vergil" at Princeton this spring (2012).