I am a historian of the late ancient Mediterranean. I have earned a B.A. in Medieval History and an M.A. in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from King’s College London. My teaching and research interests broadly embrace topics pertaining to the history of philosophy, spirituality, and society in the Mediterranean and Middle East from the 1^st– 5^th centuries CE.  

My dissertation research looks specifically at the archive of Oxyrhynchus, a middling-sized Roman town some 130 miles south of modern Cairo. This “city of the sharp-nosed fish”, though not so remarkable in its own time, has become famous to scholars of Mediterranean antiquity thanks to the many thousands of papyrus fragments (a thick sort of paper made from papyrus stalks) excavated there from 1898-1934. However, despite the fame of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, the city hardly receives focus as an object of inquiry in its own right. My research will aid in the building of a social and historical picture of this city.

What’s more, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, though an immense collection, is an incomplete archive. Many scholars working with the papyri have been told by prior excavators and papyrologists that there is no other trace of the ancient city left; this is simply not the case. The site has hosted nearly annual excavation work by a joint Calatan-Egyptian team since 1992 and their findings have added fascinating dimensions to the Oxyrhynchus we know from the papyri. I join a growing number of scholars seeking to consider papyri not as abstract texts but as text-bearing objects in assemblages with other objects.

My research looks at a specific kind of object—the amulet—as entangled in social networks with other objects, people, places, institutions, and divinities. Through analysis and interpretation of these social networks, my work explores one small corner of the Oxyrhynchite social world: the space of lived religion in the late ancient Egyptian metropolis.

A City of Amulets: Ritual Power and Daily Anxiety in Late Antique Oxyrhynchus