About
As an intellectual historian with training in Classics, I am interested in how Greco-Roman and medieval Islamicate authors articulate categories of knowledge such as ‘medicine’, ‘philosophy’, and ‘science’. My current research examines the concept of disciplinarity, especially the ways in which boundaries are drawn between disciplines in contests for epistemic authority. My first monograph, Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato’s Timaeus (Cambridge University Press, October 2020), looks at the polemical use of Plato’s cosmological dialogue by the Greek doctor Galen of Pergamum (d. c. 217) to contest philosophy’s exclusive right to define, describe, and explain the different domains of reality. I argue that, in so doing, Galen sets out to establish medicine as a reliable authority on not only the body but also the soul and the wider cosmos. Moreover, this study shows that Galen’s engagement with the Timaeus became a touchstone for Islamicate thinkers’ own disciplinary projects. I am currently preparing a second monograph on the role of brevity in the construction of scientific authority across time.
Having published a number of articles on Greco-Roman medicine and philosophy and their reception in the pre-modern Middle East, I would be delighted to supervise graduate students interested in working on any facet of the history of medicine, science, and technology from the classical to medieval period.
Affiliations:
- Classical Studies
- Mediterranean Cluster
- Program in Ancient Philosophy
Awards:
- Fall 2019: Center for Hellenic Studies Junior Fellow
- 2017–2018: Charles P. Brauer Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan
- 2014-2015: British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant
- 2014–2015: Frances A. Yates Short-term Fellowship, Warburg Institute
- October 2013–July 2014: IAS Early Career Fellowship at the University of Warwick
- Fall 2010–2013: Warwick Postgraduate Research Scholarship
Fields of Study:
- Knowledge formation in the pre-modern Mediterranean and Middle East
- Ancient and medieval medicine and philosophy, especially the reception of Platonism and Galenism
- Late antique educational and literary practices
- Greco-Arabic Translation Movement
