Classics

Originally from the UK, Ella took her BA and Masters’ degrees in Classics at the University of Oxford, then moved to the USA to take up an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics in a small liberal arts college in Vermont. During the Ph.D. program at Brown, she co-directed the Brown Late Antiquity Group (BLAG), bringing together researchers on late antiquity from across the University for monthly seminars, workshops, and events. While at Brown she has presented research at workshops and colloquia in Oxford, Exeter, Cambridge (US and UK), Leeds, Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis, New York City, Philadelphia, and Vancouver. Her PhD dissertation explores how shorthand, a new technology of the late Roman empire, shaped the historical record that survives to us, and she investigates the intellectual worlds of the non-elite shorthand-writers who produced so many of the texts we rely upon. The research was made possible by the atmosphere of open, interdisciplinary inquiry that Brown fosters, the financial support of numerous research grants including the Chancellor Thomas Tisch Doctoral Fellowship and the Mary Isabel Sibley Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the superlative instruction of many Brown Faculty members, especially Professor Jonathan Conant, her doctoral advisor. A chapter from the dissertation has appeared in article format in the 'Journal of Roman Studies'. Since October 2024, Ella has been a Junior Research Fellow in Classics at Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge, where she is currently working on producing a monograph based on her dissertation.