Lilla received a B.A. in History, summa cum laude, and an LL.B. in Law, magna cum laude, both from Tel-Aviv University. After an articled clerkship at the Association for Civil Liberties in Israel and the Supreme Court, Lilla returned for an M.A. in Ancient History at Tel Aviv University. The topics Lilla is interested in are among others the adoption of the Alphabet in the Greek-speaking world (as well as neighboring cultures), the history of writing on human bodies, and the notion of unwritten laws in archaic and classical Greece.

Mac Carley's work focuses on space and spatial theory in the ancient Mediterranean. Mac's dissertation, titled "Dramatic Space, Culture, and Performance in Republican Italy", seeks to bring together disparate methodologies to form a more integrated and interdisciplinary view of ancient spectacle and spectacular space. Other interests include engaged pedagogy, queer theory, and digital humanities. Before coming to Brown, Mac attended Stanford University and worked as a tour guide in Rome.

Maggie Danaher received her MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures from the University of Oxford (Worcester College) in 2021 and her BA in Classical Studies and Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. She is interested in Greek and Roman comedy, the ancient novel, and translation studies.

Benjamin Driver is a PhD candidate writing a dissertation which is for now cumbersomely entitled "Per Fraudem Terram Movere: Encomium, Catasterism, and Apotheosis via Intertextuality in the Copernican Revolution." The dissertation is a literary history covering the years 1460-1810 that investigates how panegyrical peritexts (mostly dedicatory epistles and poems) of Latin astronomical treatises lent credence to new discoveries by allusively coöpting classical authorities. Before coming to Brown he spent a few years teaching Latin and French at the high school level. His undergraduate degree is in Classics from Dartmouth College. In his free time he enjoys reading, hiking, looking at birds, and playing video games.

Caitlin earned her BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Upon graduating, she taught literature and philosophy seminars to high-school seniors at a classical charter school in Arizona before attending a three-year Latin and Ancient Greek post-baccalaureate program at Georgetown University.  From her study of a broad range of poets and prose authors,she has developed a fascination for the emergence and role of fiction in Greek and Roman literature and how conceptions of truthfulness and artifice inform early literary self-consciousness in antiquity.

Caitlin’s current research has focused on the Odyssey, and the ways this text may express Archaic self-conscious reflection on the tension between poetic artifice and truth. She hopes to better define this early consciousness and to use it as a backdrop for understanding the ways later Classical and Hellenistic authors engage with ideas about poetry.

Nora received a B.A. in Classics in 2019 and an M.A. cum Laude in Philology, Literatures and History of the Ancient World in 2022, both from the University of Milan. Upon graduation, she worked in a library and taught Latin and Greek in Liceo Classico. She also spent a year in Reims, France teaching Italian as a foreign language.

Nora’s research focuses on applying the lens of gender studies to the social aspects of the ancient world, particularly religion. Other interests include Archaic epic poetry, the adoption and development of the Greek alphabet, and, broadly, anthropology.

Sheldon Hallock received his MA in Latin, Greek, and Classical Humanities from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2024, and his BA in Ancient History and Classical Studies from SUNY Potsdam in 2020. From 2020 to 2022 he attended the University of Pennsylvania's post-baccalaureate program on classical languages. Sheldon is interested in Imperial poetry, Graeco-Roman comedy, ancient religion, intertextuality, historiography, and linguistics.

Sonja received her B.A. in Classical Studies from Western Washington University in 2018, and then her M.A. in Classical Studies from McGill University in 2021. Her master’s papers explored reception of Catullus’ mourning poems & fragmentation of/in the corpus of Sappho.

Garrett Hanson received his M.A. in Classical Philology from the University of Arizona in 2025, and his B.A. in Classics and Philosophy from Kalamazoo College in 2023. His M.A. Thesis, entitled “Orpheus, Pre-Socratics, Exegesis, and the Near East: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Derveni Papyrus”, dealt primarily with the generic categorization of the Derveni Papyrus, through comparison with other texts found in both Greek and broader Mediterranean contexts. 

His research interests include Greco-Roman biography and historiography, with a special focus on how cultural and religious background inform the composition of characters and texts, the material culture of writing, in the form of epigraphic and papyrological evidence, and religious communities in the ancient Mediterranean. 

Doug studied Religion at Columbia University School of General Studies, where he graduated summa cum laude. His thesis explored ways of understanding the character Karna, an ambivalent figure in the Mahabharata. After working at the Earth Institute at Columbia, Doug attended CUNY’s Summer Latin Institute and then pursued post-baccalaureate studies in Latin and Greek at CUNY-Hunter College. While at Hunter, Doug presented a paper on satirical features in Seneca’s Thyestes at the Sunoikisis Undergraduate Research Symposium at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Doug’s interests currently include Lucretius and Apuleius and their attitudes toward religion.

Silja received her M.A. in Classical Studies at Tulane University in 2025 and her B.A. in Classics and English Literary Studies at Bucknell University in 2022. From 2022-2023 she was a recipient of the University of Pennsylvania’s Elsie Phare Fellowship and attended its post-baccalaureate in Classical Studies. In summer of 2022 she attended CUNY’s Latin and Greek Institute. 

Silja's research interests center on Roman and Greek social history, literature, and gender, with particular focus on the lives and representations of enslaved laborers and freedpersons. Her M.A. thesis examined intergenerational politics and mentorship in Plutarch’s An Seni, Praecepta, and selected Lives, and she is currently developing a project on the ornatrix—enslaved female hairdressers in Roman society—using epigraphic, literary, and archaeological evidence to explore intersections of labor and power. With a focus on an interdisciplinary approach to classical studies, she aims to integrate philological rigor with insights from political philosophy, ethics, and history, connecting the study of ancient texts to broader questions of justice, effective governance, and societal structures, fostering a deeper understanding of how classical ideas inform contemporary intellectual and cultural debates.

Silja has also been a Mellon Fellow in Community-Engaged Scholarship, working on food justice initiatives in New Orleans. She recently returned to ballet after some time away and has two rescue cats.

Ronnie received her MA in Classics after receiving a BA in Classics and General History, both from Tel Aviv University. Prior to joining Brown, she taught high-school-level history and founded a digital platform and podcast for public historical education. Her interests include Cicero's philosophical writing, the intersection of historiography and political thought in antiquity, and political culture in Rome. 

Clare came to Brown in 2020, after receiving her BA with a double major in Classics and Comparative Literature from The University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on representations of raced and gendered social marginality in Greek fiction written under the Roman Empire. She has a secondary interest in moments of Classical Reception in Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa. These two projects are conceptually united by the common threads of identity and empire. 

Clare is also pursuing Brown’s graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies through the Pembroke Center. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and exploring New England.

Michaiah Kojoian received her BA in Classics (minor in Mathematics) from Providence College with an Honors Thesis entitled “Beneath the Surface: Hadrian’s Underground Contributions to Roman Greece.” She was also the recipient of the Leroy D. Aaronson, M.D. Award for Academic Excellence in Undergraduate Studies in Greek and Latin and the Highest GPA Award in the Department of History and Classics. In 2024 she graduated with her MA in Classics from Tufts University where she also served as a Teaching Assistant for undergraduate language and ‘culture’ courses. As a graduate student, she contributed digitally edited editions of selected Greek and Latin texts in the form of treebanks (in which every word, phrase, and clause is fully morphologically and syntactically identified, and dependent upon the word, phrase, or clause it modifies) to the Perseids Project (a subset of the Perseus Project). She was one of the winners for the department’s translation contest in 2022, and won Second Place and ‘People’s Choice’ at Tufts University’s Graduate Student Council’s Three-minute Thesis Competition (3MT) in 2023. Her thesis, directed by Professor Andreola Rossi and entitled “Novus Heros: A Narratological Study of Aeneas’ Apologoi in Light of Homer’s Odyssey,” investigated the narrational strategies of Aeneas and Odysseus throughout their respective hero’s stories. Her research interests include Greek and Latin epic poetry, aqueduct construction, Republican and early Imperial Rome, and early Christian texts.

Itamar Levin is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Classics, specializing in ancient history. His research combines traditional philology with contemporary frameworks to explore the relationship between power and culture in ancient Greek society. In his two forthcoming publications, “Legal Death and Odysseus’ Kingship” (The Classical Quarterly) and “News and the Family in Ancient Greece” (The Classical Journal), he illuminates tacit cultural institutions in antiquity by applying notions from legal theory and communication studies. He is currently working on his dissertation, which expands the concept of necropower and develops a methodology for studying the politics of commemoration in ancient Greek society. Specifically, he focuses on cenotaphs and the instrumentalizing of the absent dead for the (re)production of civic ideology. His work is situated within broader scholarly conversations about the role of power in shaping cultural practices and the ethical responsibilities of scholars in examining these dynamics.

Mary Grace Lewis received her undergraduate degree in History at the University of California, Berkeley with a specialization in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world. Her senior thesis examined Livy's representation of the Bacchanalia festival in Rome and explored ideas about senatorial impetus to control the movement of Roman women and slaves. After completing a post-baccalaureate in Classical Studies at Columbia University, she received her Master's in Classics at Boston College. As a Roman historian in training, her research continues to center the lived experiences of women and slaves living in the ancient world. The use of material culture is integral to Mary Grace's research and interests, and her work often centers coins and inscriptions in conjunction with literary evidence. Her research interests include Ancient Roman history, Roman women, epigraphy, numismatics, and marginality.

Kiran Pizarro Mansukhani received his MA in Classics from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2022 and an AB in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 2017. His interests include ancient Greek epistemology, ancient philosophy more broadly, and the reception of Plato in South and Southeast Asian political thought. His writing can be seen in the upcoming Routledge volume, Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics, the Society for Classical Studies’ Professional Blog, and Eidolon. His full CV can be found on his academia.edu page.

Davide received his M.A. in Philology, Literatures and History of the Ancient World from Sapienza University of Rome in 2024 and his B.A. in Classics from the University of Milan in 2022, after completing Liceo Classico in a small town in Northern Italy. His research interests include Latin epigraphy and Roman social history, with a special focus on identity issues in Cisalpine Gaul during the early Imperial period. In particular, Davide’s work seeks to analyze how deeply the Roman conquest affected marginal centers and their populations –socially, politically, and culturally – by combining historical, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence.

Vivian received her BA in Classical Languages from Bryn Mawr College in 2024. Her senior thesis analyzed manipulation as used by women in Homeric epic. She is interested in archaic Greek epic, narratology, women in the ancient world, and weaving in Greek and Latin literature.

Meg Sanglikar earned both a BA in Classics and a BS in Molecular Biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021. She received an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago in 2022, where she wrote a thesis dissecting the portrayal of Livia and the domus Augusta in the first four books of the Annales. Her research combines philological and historiographical analysis of various writers such as Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio in order to examine the relationship between imperial power, propaganda, rhetoric, and transmission.

Nick Trcalek received a Bachelor’s degree in History and Classics summa cum laude from Texas A&M University in 2020 and a Master’s degree in Classical Studies with Historical Emphasis from Tufts University in 2023. His Master’s thesis, entitled “Mapping the Via Hadrumetina and its Roman Period Landscape”, investigated settlement and land use in an important agricultural and political region of Africa Proconsularis. His interests lie in all things pertaining to the ancient world, but, in particular, the Early and Middle Roman Republic as well as North Africa throughout all periods of antiquity."

Preston received a B.A. in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2013 and an M.A. in Religious Studies from Wake Forest University in 2019. For four years, Preston taught high school Latin and Classical Rhetoric. His research interests lie generally in late antique Latin literature, and more specifically in the transformation of traditional Roman mores during the spread of Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries CE.

Qizhen earned his M.A. in History at University of New Hampshire in 2019. His main interest lies in the Hellenistic world, particularly in the development of administration and bureaucracy from early to mid Hellenistic period (cir. 300-150 BCE). At Brown, Qizhen wishes to further explore questions concerning how the romance of “spear-won land (δορίκτητος χώρα)” was grounded in and realized through fiscality and day-to-day management.

He earned his B.A. from University of New Hampshire with a double major in History (honors) and Classics in 2016. In the summer of 2015, he had the honor of joining the excavation at Çadır Höyük in Yozgat, Turkey from which he studied an extensive amount of material evidence for his Honors Thesis titled The Ethnic Identity and Redefinition of the Galatians in the Hellenistic World. Between 2016 and 2017, he worked for Dickinson College in editing digital Latin-Chinese and Greek Chinese lexicons, taking advantage of his training in Greek and Latin and background as a native Chinese speaker. The interactions between the East and West, whether during the antiquity or modernity, are also of his interest.

Michael received a B.A. with Highest Honors in Philosophy and a B.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia in 2015. His honors thesis dealt with competing theories of practical rationality in connection with Socrates’ theory of pleasure in Protagoras. After undertaking an independent research project on Works and Days at the Seminar für Klassische Philologie at the Universität Heidelberg, he entered the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he wrote a thesis on non-human animal perception in Hierocles’ Elements of Ethics.

Michael’s hobbies include cycling and devouring news about Chicago municipal politics.