About our staff

I was born and brought up in Glasgow, but my BA and PhD are both from University College London (UCL); I am also particularly fond of the English Lake District.

Since completing my PhD I have taught at St Andrews, UCL, Edinburgh and Nottingham, and I am very pleased now to have returned to Scotland and to Edinburgh.

When not in my office or the library, I enjoy classical music and looking at wildlife and the company of Figaro, a ginger and white cat.

I have been invited to act as referee for a number of distinguished journals in Classics:

• Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
• Classical Quarterly
• Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
• Journal of Hellenic Studies, Ramus.

Academia.edu profile

Summary of research interests

• Mediterranean

• Ancient Civilisations
• Culture
• Ideas
• Language & Literature
• Society

• Antiquity

My main research interests are in the poetry of archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greece, especially archaic and early classical lyric and Hellenistic poetry.

I am interested in approaching early Greek poetry through its ancient reception, and in the relationship between drama and non-dramatic poetry. Poets of special interest include Simonides (especially!), Sappho, Ibycus, Callimachus, Theocritus; I have also published on both Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

P. Köln 429: Sappho's 'Tithonus poem' and another anonymous poem. In recent years, new papyrus finds have continued to transform our knowledge of early Greek poetry.

At the moment I am awaiting publication of my book Simonides the Poet: intertextuality and reception, in which I combine reading Simonides against traditions from earlier poetry with reading Simonides in the light of the rich tradition of ancient reception through stories and anecdotes about his life.

I am also writing a short book on Callimachus.

After that, I intend to develop a project about genre and intertextuality in early and classical Greek poetry.

My teaching, as my research, has focused on Greek language, literature and culture, but I have been known to dabble on the Roman side as well. At the moment, I am teaching Greek language and literature from beginners' to advanced levels, and contributing literature lectures for our interdisciplinary first year courses on Greek history and culture.

I shall be teaching a Greek reading course for our masters students this year, on Bacchylides.