Education in Graeco-Roman Egypt: An Intercultural Approach
Education in Graeco-Roman Egypt: An Intercultural Approach
Originally trained in Communications and Journalism at Western Sydney University (2007-2010), I studied Ancient Languages and Egyptology at Macquarie University in Sydney (2012-2019). My postgraduate work focused on bilingualism and language contact in documentary papyri from Early Islamic Egypt. I completed a PhD in Ancient History at Macquarie in 2019, in which I examined the linguistic relationship between Greek and Coptic legal formulae in contracts from the 6th to 9th centuries. My particular interest was in investigating possible instances of Greek-induced grammatical change in the Egyptian language.
Since graduating, I have worked with apocryphal literature in Coptic, both as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded project APOCRYPHA: Storyworlds in Transition (2020-2023), hosted by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo, and as a Junior Research Fellow at the DFG Centre for Advanced Studies “Beyond Canon” (2024-2025), hosted by the Department of Catholic Theology at the University of Regensburg. As part of this research, I produced my forthcoming monograph Coptic Apocrypha from the Monastery of Saint Macarius: A Monastic Library from the Perspective of Material Philology. Studying the material and paratextual features of around 230 Coptic manuscripts from the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the Wadi al-Natrun, dated to the 9th to 14th centuries, this research demonstrates how Coptic apocrypha, as well as Coptic literary works more broadly, were integrated into liturgical practices in the monastery. Within this field, I my research has also focused on scribal practices, education, and book production in monastic communities in Islamic Egypt.
My research also focuses on the use of digital humanities methodologies. From 2023-2024, I was Director of Operations for the ERC Proof of Concept project Tool for the Analysis of Information Transfer in Manuscript Cultures (TInTraMaC). A spin-off from the APOCRYPHA project, it used the database we created as a starting point to develop a template and research tool through which other scholars can develop their own SQL databases for the study of textual material.
