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Postgraduate Research

Current PhD students and research topics

• Margarita Alexandrou: Commentary on Hipponax
• Danai Bafa: An edition of unpublished papyri of Greek prose from Oxyrhynchus
• Emma Cole: The reception of Greek tragedy in postdramatic theatre
• Manuela Dal Borgo: Thucydides and Game Theory
  
• Joyce Datiles: Heroism on Screen
• Beatrice Da Vela: Donatus’ Commentary on Terence’s Adelphoe
• Daisy Dunn: Ecphrasis from Hellenistic Poetry to Cinquecento Venetian painting
• Rithu Fernando: the Mirror: a comparative literary, cultural and art-historical study
• Susan Fogarty: An Edition of unpublished Documentary Papyri from Oxyrhynchus
• Nicholas Freer: Vergil and Philodemus
• Iphigeneia Giannadaki: A Commentary on Demosthenes’ Speech Against Androtion (Dem. 22)
• Nikolina Hadjigiorgi: the reception of Sophocles in Later Antiquity
• Kyriaki Ioannidou: A commentary on Menander's fragmentary plays Georgos, Heros and Theophoroumene
• Trinidad Silva Irarrazaval: A revision of the categories of sophistes, sophos and philosophos as qualities of human rationality and as moral models of wisdom before and in Plato
• Xi Ji: Death and the identity of the dying (with special reference to the philosophical ideas of Plato)
• Ioannis Lambrou: Homeric methodology of critical reception
• Anastasia Lazani: the Aeschylean chorus
• Adam Lecznar: Postcolonial readings of ancient Greek drama
• Tsu-I Liao: Modern functional grammar and ancient rhetorical texts
• Emily Lord-Kambitsch: Reception of Roman emotions in modern cinema
• Skye McAlpine: Ovid's Ars Amatoria in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England
• Katerina Mikellidou: Fifth-century drama and the underworld
• Hamutal Minkowich: Between divination and philosophy: a post-Freudian perspective on Herodotean and biblical dreams
• Annette Mitchell: Freud's ancient chronology
• Carlotta Montagna: Freedom of thought, speech and action in the early imperial period
• Giada Orlietti: an edition of selected literary and documentary papyri
• Luke Richardson: Albert Camus and classical reception in Algeria
• Andreas Serafim: Theatrical features in Demosthenes and Aeschines
• Ben Temblett: Deleuze and Platonism
• You-Shih Wang: Plato and the rhetoric of eros and the polis
• Michael Waters: The reception of ancient Greek tragedy in England 1660-c.1765
• Chris Webb: Artificial amnesia and memory management: λήθη in the Sophoclean πόλις
• Bridget Wright: The treatment of Julius Caesar's memory in Rome, 14 - 98 AD
• Bobby Xinyue: The divinity of Augustus in the poetry of Vergil, Horace and Propertius

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Margarita ALEXANDROU
email: m.alexandrou@ucl.ac.uk

Research Interests: Homer, Archaic Greek Lyric, Ancient Greek Drama (especially Comedy), Hellenistic Poetry, Greek Literary Papyri
Thesis title: Commentary on Hipponax

Brief Biography:  After a BA in Greek Philology (with a focus in Classics) from the University of Athens and an MA in Classics at UCL, I am currently working on a PhD under the supervision of Professor Chris Carey.

Thesis abstract:  Hipponax is one of the most neglected poets of Archaic Lyric.  However, he is one of the most fascinating as he distances himself from the mainstream of iambus (Archilochus and Semonides) in many respects.  His social register is different from the rest of Archaic Lyric, and especially from the rest of archaic iambus; his poetry opens up broader narratological questions such as the role/identity of the poetic persona and larger literary-historical questions such as the nature of the genre of iambos and its audience in particular.  His iambography is also distinctive as far as his linguistic scope, register and tone of his poetry are concerned.  He is also compelling for his reworking of the past literature (especially of Homeric epic which is frequently an object of parody in his poems) as well as for the major influence that he has exercised on later literature and especially on Hellenistic poets such as Callimachus and Herodas, who were as Hipponax himself fond of exploring exotic areas of literature and unusual modes of poetry.  However, Hipponax not only depicts, but also remains himself a ‘scapegoat’ of Greek Literature, wronged both by the tradition (his work has been very fragmentarily preserved) and by recent scholarship, as he has been very little studied.

The absence of commentaries on Hipponax is generally acknowledged, along with the need to fill this gap and to provide an essential tool for a detailed study of his iambography.  Masson’s commentary (1962) is brief and in many aspects outdated, and West’s publication (1974), despite its scholarly merits, is very limited in scale and cover, restricted to brief notes on a handful of selected passages.  Finally the most important twentieth century student of Hipponax, Degani (1984) despite his long-term devotion to the iambographer, has not left us with a commentary.

Therefore, my aim is to provide a literary lemmatic commentary on the main fragments of the iambic poet Hipponax and subsequently a considerable bibliographical reference which will at last fill this gap in Classical bibliography.

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Manuela DAL BORGO
email: m.borgo@ucl.ac.uk

Research interests:  Thucydides and Game Theory.

Thesis title:  Thucydides and his Games

Brief biography: I am a third year M.Phil./PhD candidate in the Department of Greek and Latin engaged in cross disciplinary research with the UCL Department of Economics. My supervisors are Simon Hornblower, Professor of Classics and of Ancient History, and Steffen Huck, Professor of Economics. My research is funded by the UCL Graduate School Research Scholarship (GSRS) and the UCL Overseas Research Students Award (ORS).  I completed the MA in Classics at UCL in Sept. 2008, supervised by Simon Hornblower, and the MA in Humanities from Florida State University in 2007. During and after my studies in Sao Paulo, Brazil (BA, FASM 2005), I worked in the private sector and in non-profit volunteer services.

Thesis abstract:  I intend to interpret Thucydides by utilizing modern
game theory, which uncovers the counterfactuals and sequences of actions,
to distill the abstract strategic structures that Thucydides illuminates.

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Iphigeneia GIANNADAKI
email: i.giannadaki@ucl.ac.uk

Thesis title: A Commentary on Demosthenes’ Speech Against Androtion (Dem. 22).

Brief Biography: Born in Rethymnon, I began my BA in Classical Philology at the University of Crete, where my fascination with the Attic Orators originates. Then I moved to London and I continued my studies obtaining a MA in Classics at UCL and I have been lucky enough to be able to remain here for a PhD since. I am currently working on my research project "A Commentary on Demosthenes’ Speech Against Androtion" ―a fascinating speech (concerning a graphe paranomon brought against a very active politician of the 4th c. and equally exciting personality, Androtion) but relatively neglected by modern commentators―under the supervision of Professor Chris Carey. My project is funded by the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece (IKY).

Research interests so far: Besides Greek oratory, rhetoric and law, my interests lie in Greek lyric poetry, Aristophanic comedy and Greek historiography (especially Herodotus, Thucydides and Atthis).

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Ioannis LAMBROU

email: ioannis.lambrou.10@ucl.ac.uk 

Studies: During my undergraduate studies in Classical Philology at the University of Athens, my alma mater (I graduated with a BA (Ptychion) in 2009), I became increasingly fascinated by Homer’s obvious debt to epic tradition and I grew intrigued about the complexity which even today underscores the nexus of the pre-Homeric epic tradition, the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle, and merits further investigation. The in-depth study of this interrelationship has become the focus of my postgraduate research ever since. In June 2010, I earned my M.Phil. degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge (Clare College) under the guidance of Professor James Diggle and Dr Renaud Gagné. Today, still furthering my passion for Classics and being mentored by Professor Christopher Carey, I have been continuing my research at UCL towards the completion of my doctoral thesis since September of 2010. My M.Phil. and Ph.D. research has been supported by the Cambridge European Trust, the A. G. Leventis Foundation, and the UCL Graduate School. Recent and forthcoming conference presentations include papers on aspects of the dialogical and competitive dynamics of Greek epic performance poetry. My other research interests cluster around the comparative study of agonistic poetics of oral performance, the Trojan War images in visual art, and the reception of the Trojan myth in lyric poetry and drama.

Research Project: Homer and the Epic Cycle: From Dialogical Dynamics to Challenge

Given that the Trojan War Cyclic epics survive only in isolated fragments and summaries, so far a collective and multi-faceted appreciation of the connections between the Homeric epics and the traditions represented in the Epic Cycle has not yet been attempted. Though suggestive, the Neoanalytic ‘source-and-recipient model’ in focusing on specific ‘intertextual’ echoes missed the larger dialogue in play between the Homeric epics and the Cyclic tradition, insofar as a linear analysis approach was applied to determine complex non-linear associations: ‘Homer’ was seen as having re-contextualised motifs taken from pre-Homeric epics which narrated stories which ultimately came to crystallise in the Epic Cycle, thereby putting old wine in new wineskins. This thesis, focusing closely on the competitive framework of epic performance, sets out to investigate the broad set of multilateral two-way dynamics between ‘Homer’ and the traditions represented in the Epic Cycle, i.e., how epic poets reflect back upon, thereby positioning themselves within, epic tradition: by examining anew all the available fragments and summaries therein this thesis traces how specific narrative patterns and methodology at work in the Cyclic poems find their way, through established dynamics both dialogical and competitive, into the texture of the Homeric epics and vice versa. This research project will potentially contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of Homeric artistry, and can also provide a basis to suggest that the Cyclic Epics may not have been as inelegant and tasteless as often supposed.

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Adam LECZNAR
email: a.lecznar@ucl.ac.uk

Studies: I undertook my undergraduate studies at UCL and was awarded my BA in 2009, having completed a final year dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy under the supervision of Miriam Leonard.  I proceeded to jump ship to Cambridge for a year where I completed an MPhil in Classics by writing a dissertation on the concept of performance in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and other shorter essays on Hegel's Antigone, Matthew Arnold's pastoral poetry and Friedrich Nietzsche's Prometheus.   Bored by the provincial life, I returned to UCL in September 2010 to start my PhD, again under the supervision of Miriam Leonard.

Thesis title: Wole Soyinka's adaptation of the Bacchae in its performative, cultural and political contexts

Brief description: In 1973, the National Theatre of Great Britain put on a production of Euripides' Bacchae using a translation which they had commissioned from the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka.  Though this translation has received a certain amount of critical attention, especially in light of the recent increase of interest in African, and more generally postcolonial, adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy, it has not yet been read in light of the dual African and European cultural contexts which underpin it.  I will explore the popularity of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of Dionysus in the West during the 1960s and 1970s and how this gave birth to Soyinka's drama in the European theatrical context of its genesis.  I argue that Soyinka's version of the Bacchae is informed at all stages by these two contexts, and that it is impossible to adapt an ancient Greek tragedy without engaging with all the various traditions surround it, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

Research interests: Nineteenth/Twentieth-Century intellectual history and its use of Graeco-Roman antiquity; the reception of ancient Greek tragedy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (philosophy and literature); Friedrich Nietzsche's appropriation of antiquity; Vergilian pastoral and its Nachleben.  

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Katerina MIKELLIDOU
email: katerina.mikellidou.10@ucl.ac.uk

Studies: In 2005 I moved from Cyprus to Athens in order to undertake my BA degree in Greek Philology and, more specifically, in Classical Studies. Four years later, after I obtained my Diploma I read for a Masters degree in Greek and Roman Languages and Literature in Oxford University. There, I studied Greek Comedy and Tragedy as well as Greek and Latin Literary Papyrology, and I wrote a thesis on the motif of the Intruder-scenes in the Aristophanic corpus under the supervision of Dr Angus Bowie. In 2010 I started my PhD in UCL under the supervision of Professor Chris Carey. Both my MA and PhD degrees are funded by the A. G. Leventis Foundation.
Thesis title: Crossing Boundaries. The representation of the Underworld in fifth-century Attic Drama

Brief Description: It is perhaps paradoxical that Attic drama, a genre primarily focusing on behaviours and decisions relevant to the earthly life, exhibits in all of its three forms – tragedy, comedy, and satyr drama – a vigorous concern with the idea of the Underworld and everything this place contains. The texture of the unseen realm, the personality of its divine rulers, and the state of its mortal inhabitants constitute themes of recurrent treatment and are introduced in the dramatic plot under various forms and shapes. What this thesis aims at is to explore a range of motifs whereby the dramatist challenges the distinction between life and death, elides the boundaries of the two spheres, and allows his heroes to move notionally or literally from the world of the living to the world of the dead and vice versa. The temporary resurrection of the dead for consultation (psychagogia), the descent to Hades (katabasis), the spontaneous ghost apparitions, the addresses to the dead and the infernal gods, or even the tragic persona of the moribund, establish a nexus of interactions between the two realms and provide insights into the idea of what lies beyond and beneath. Fifth-century drama, one could assert, stages a series of fascinating actions, reactions, and interactions that illuminate diverse, often startling, facets of the Underworld: place of inspiration and support, revelation and knowledge, destruction and revenge, misery and insubstantiality, idyllic life and supreme bliss.

Research Interests: Greek Tragedy, Greek Comedy, Archaic poetry, Greek Religion, Ancient Ritual, Greek Literary Papyrology.

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Andreas SERAFIM
email: andreas.serafim.10@ucl.ac.uk

http://classicsserandreas.weebly.com/

http://ucl.academia.edu/AndreasSeraphim

Description: my name is Andreas Serafim and I come from Paphos, Cyprus. I read Classics at the University of Cyprus, where I awarded a BA in 2008. Then I pursued my postgraduate studies (MA 2010) at the University of Texas at Austin, under the supervision of Professor Michael Gagarin. While at UT Austin, I was Teaching and Research Assistant for ancient Greek and Latin language and literature classes. I am currently a PhD candidate (3rd year) and primary tutor for ancient language classes at the University College London (UCL). My research project is supervised by Professor Chris Carey and has been generously supported by the State Fellowship Foundation of Cyprus (IKYK), the A. G. Leventis Foundation, and the Department of Classics at the University College London.

Research interests: I am Hellenist! I am primarily interested in Greek (esp. Attic) Oratory and performance criticism. Side interests: ancient Greek medicine (especially the Hippocratic Corpus) and politics.

Main research project:

Performing Justice: aspects of performance in selected speeches of Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19)

Scholarly research in the past has tended to connect oratorical performance with gestural and vocal hypocrisis, to elaborate on the examination of the convergences between oratory and theatre, or to argue that it is an impossible task to reconstruct performance through an interpretation of the incomplete text. This thesis aims to enhance current research by arguing firstly, that performance encompasses the possibility of more subtle communication between the speaker and the audience than mere hypocrisis; and secondly, that aspects of the transmitted texts allow glimpses into the performative dimension of speeches, whether or not these connect directly with the practice in the theatre.

A topic on this scale can only be feasible if one adopts a case study approach. My thesis examines both direct/sensory and cognitive/emotional performative techniques in selected speeches of Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19). Direct/sensory performative techniques refer to gestural and vocal ploys of hypocrisis, as well as information about the staging of the speech – everything that has to do with the senses of sight and hearing. Cognitive/emotional techniques include the portrayal of characters as well as a wide range of rhetorical strategies that have an “audience-orientated” end: to enable the speaker to elicit the audience’s verbal or non-verbal reaction in the law-court, engage their emotions, create a certain disposition in them towards himself and his opponent, and hence, affect their verdict.

This performance-orientated reading of speeches enhances our understanding of political trials. In the law-court, where an adversarial trial could be won or lost by the quality of each side’s deployment of the full range of oratorical techniques as much if not more than the quality of the argument, understanding the performance related aspects of those techniques sheds light on the nature of competition and the decision-making process in fourth-century Athens.

Publications:

1) “Making the audience: ekphrasis and rhetorical strategy in Demosthenes 18 and 19”, forthcoming in Classical Quarterly (2015)

2) Book review: Journal of Hellenic Studies 132 (2012) - Sundahl, Mark, David Mirhady, and Ilias Arnaoutoglou (eds). A new working bibliography of ancient Greek law 7th - 4th centuries BC (Athens 2011) online >>

Additional academic experience:

Teaching: Course Tutor, University College London, Greek Texts I (2012-3)

Conferences: Conference co-organizer - “A theatre of Justice: aspects performance in Greco-Roman oratory and rhetoric”, University College London, 19-20 April 2012

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Mike WATERS
email: m.waters@ucl.ac.uk

Research interests: By ‘reception’ of ancient Greek tragedies I mean the reasons why they were relevant to people in the place and time that I am studying, how responses to them interacted with the intellectual and cultural context of that place and time, the various ways in which they were ‘used’ or ‘appropriated’ by contemporary writers, and how the plays impacted on them and the culture of the period.  To that end, I am studying attitudes to ancient Greek tragedy in a number of areas of intellectual and cultural history in late C17 and early C18 England, including discussions of the nature and theory of tragedy, the ancients v moderns debate, Jeremy Collier’s attack on the immorality and profaneness of the Restoration stage, translations, adaptations of ancient plays for the English stage and the history of scholarship.  Scholars have not usually studied the connections between those areas, including how they reflect attitudes to the past which will be an overarching theme of my thesis.

Brief biography: I took early retirement from the Inland Revenue in September 2005 and completed a BA in Ancient History and Egyptology, and an MA in Ancient History, at UCL, based in the History Department and the Institute of Archaeology.  One of my MA modules was Ancient Greek Theatre and its Reception with Dr. Miriam Leonard, who agreed to be my supervisor when I found the subject so enjoyable and interesting that I decided to cross Gordon Street to the Greek and Latin Department to start postgraduate research in September 2010.  I am also supervised by Dr. Paul Davis in the Department of English Language and Literature.

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Chris WEBB
email: christopher.webb.09@ucl.ac.uk 

Thesis title (provisional): Artificial amnesia and memory management: λήθη in the Sophoclean πόλις

Abstract: My research topic examines the concept of oblivion in Sophoclean tragedy. It examines the manipulation of recollection and forgetting in order to protect the tragic πόλις. By the analysing the use of memory, my aim is to articulate the way tragedy wields and controls remembrance in order to negotiate through a period of στάσις.
The interrelated themes of λήθη and μνησικακεῖν run prominently throughout 5th century Greek political history. It is the intention of this study to better define and contextualise the use of memory, and then to apply these results to the tragic πόλις as an interpretative tool. There are parallels within Greek politics and tragedy that I intend to exploit with the aim of centralising memory as being an important component in the interpretation and understanding of these themes in Sophocles. My research will analyse three test-cases; the Antigone, Electra and Oedipus at Colonus.

Research interests: Alongside Tragedy, my interests include Epic, mythology and its representation in art, and Greek law.   

Brief Academic biography:  Having trained and worked as a Chef since leaving secondary school, I returned to higher education (part-time) taking my BA hons (Classical Studies) from Birkbeck, University of London, where I wrote my dissertation on gender in the Iliad. I continued at Birkbeck for my MA (Classical Civilisation), completing my degree with a study of ξενία laws in the Odyssey. I came to UCL in January 2010, and am again to be found on the part-time route. My supervisors are Professor Miriam Leonard and Professor Chris Carey.

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