Following the completion of my PhD in 2015 in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, from 2016-19 I took up a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. Since 2020 I have been employed as a lecturer in the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Wollongong.
I am currently undertaking three research projects.
The first is a monograph which constitutes a detailed examination of Plato’s presentation of immortality in the Symposium. I argue that this presentation is quite different from the familiar metaphysical models of immortality in other dialogues, which concern either the essential immortality of the soul, or the achieved immortality that comes from identifying oneself with, and nurturing the rational part of one’s soul. The immortality of the Symposium, by contrast, is one that is achieved through leaving behind tokens or memorials (ideally in the form of philosophical logoi) that secure the ‘memory of one’s virtue’. These logoi in turn inspire others towards virtuous action. This is, then, neither a personal nor a subjective form of immortality, but one which is attained through reproducing one’s virtuous ethos through the generations. That is to say, the best part of oneself ‘lives on’ in others through making them relevantly similar to oneself.
The second research project with which I am involved is entitled 'Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Greek Literature' with Dr. George Gazis (Durham - Classics), an interdisciplinary project in which we explore the influences, intersections, and developments of understandings of the Underworld between authors of various intellectual traditions, including poets, philosophers, theologians, and historiographers. The major outcome of this project is an edited volume of papers published through Liverpool University Press, which developed from an international conference hosted in July 2016.
The final project I am undertaking is entitled ‘Plato on Comedy’, which I am co-organising with Prof. Andrea Capra (Durham - Classics) and Dr. Sarah Miles (Durham - Classics). This project aims to offer the first systematic investigation of Plato's treatment of comedy and the comic in the dialogues, and will take a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to this issue, drawing on the expertise both of philosophers and classicists working on topics including Plato's poetics, the wider philosophical reception of comedy in the philosophical tradition, and comedy itself. In doing so we hope to illuminate the full richness and complexity of Plato's treatment of comedy, and situate Plato's treatment of comedy within a broader history of development of the comic tradition. This project was selected to be Durham’s Department of Classics and Ancient History's Departmental Research Project in the 2018-19 academic year. The initial outcomes of this project were a Workshop in March 2020 leading to an international conference in July 2020. An edited volume, entitled ‘The Draw of Thaleia: Plato’s Critiques, Appropriations, and Transformations of Greek Comedy’, has been accepted for consideration for the Classics list for Cambridge University Press. Contributors for this project include Prof. Kathryn Morgan (UCLA), Prof. Richard Hunter (Cambridge), Prof. Edith Hall (King’s College London), Prof. Michael Silk (King’s College London), Prof. Sonja Tanner (Colorado), Prof. France Trivigno (Oslo), Prof. Gabrielle Cornelli (Brasília), Assoc. Prof. Pierre Destrée (Louvain), Dr. Jonathan Fine (Hawai’i, Manoa), and Dr. Birte Loschenkohl (Essex).
My research more generally concerns the way in which ancient philosophers (and particularly Plato and the Presocratics) appropriate and exploit cultural ideas, traditions, and discourses, and adapt and reconstruct them in ways that produce forms that are distinctly philosophical. To this end I have published articles concerning ancient philosopher's use of myth, their appropriation of comedy, and religious ideas. Full details of my publications please consult my CV.
In addition to ancient philosophy, I am also interested in aesthetics, Nietzsche, German Idealism (and particularly Hegel), ethics, and bioethics.
I also have a great passion for teaching. My teaching interests are diverse, and my areas of focus are ancient philosophy, Greek and Roman poetry, aesthetics, ethics, and bioethics. Throughout my teaching career I have become greatly interested in the learning experience at the tertiary level, particularly in how one can teach effectively in a university context, and concerning the best way that students can be guided in pursuing their own learning.