Academic Background

Educated in London (BA) and Cambridge (PhD), I taught at the University of Manchester and the Open University before coming to Magdalen in 2008.

Undergraduate Teaching

I teach classical literature at both the College and the University. I am always keen to hear from people interested in studying Classics and related subjects at Magdalen.

Research Interests

I have research interests in various areas of Greek literature (especially tragedy and lyric) and its afterlife in later periods. Currently, I am working on a “green-and-yellow” commentary on selections from Greek lyric, and in a more speculative vein I am thinking about applying cognitive science to Greek literature.

Selected Publications

'Bringing together nature and culture: on the uses and limits of cognitive science for the study of performance reception', in E. Hall and S. Harrop eds. Theorising performance: Greek drama, cultural history and critical practice (London 2010) ch. 9.

ed. The Cambridge companion to Greek lyric (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009).

'The reception of Sophocles' representation of physical pain', American Journal of Philology 128 (2007) 443-67.

Jointly with J. Haubold, 'Reception and tradition', in L. Hardwick and C. Stray (eds.), A companion to classical receptions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) 13-25.

'Trojan Women in Yorubaland: Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu', in L. Hardwick and C. Gillespie (eds.), Classics in post-colonial worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 15-39. Also in: S. Adeyemi (ed.), Portraits of an eagle – a festschrift in honour of Femi Osofisan (Bayreuth: Bayreuth University, 2006) 89-110.

'Körper und Geist in tragischen Schmerzszenen', in B. Seidensticker and M. Vöhler (eds) Gewalt und Ästhetik: Zur Gewalt und ihrer Darstellung in der griechischen Klassik (Berlin, De Gruyter 2006) 123-48.

'The mediated ending of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus', Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 57 (2006) 43-62.

‘West-African adaptations of Greek tragedy’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 50 (2004) 1-28, and reprinted in B.Goff (ed.) Classics and colonialism (London: Duckworth, 2005) 118-46.

'Classical commentary in Byzantium: John Tzetzes on ancient Greek literature', in R. K. Gibson and C. S. Kraus (eds.), The classical commentary: histories, practices, theory (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 141-69.

edited jointly with P. Michelakis, Homer, tragedy and beyond: studies in honour of P. E. Easterling (London: Hellenic Society, 2001).

The language of Sophocles: communality, communication and involvement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000).