Graduate Students | Department of Classics

Amanda Ball’s research interests lie in cultural contact in the northern Aegean, sacred landscapes, ancient colonization, and ancient magic. She has participated in a range of archaeological projects in England, Italy, and Greece, most recently with the American Excavation Samothrace. She received a B.A. cum laude in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, and continued on to receive her M.A. in Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. At Penn, she completed her Master’s thesis entitled “Custom Leaves Us Only at the Tomb: A Re-Examination of the Burial Mounds of Stryme”. She began the graduate program in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall of 2017. In the spring of 2019, Amanda completed her MA at UNC Chapel Hill and wrote a Master’s thesis entitled “A New Typology of Magic Dolls.” She received the Olivia James Traveling Fellowship from the AIA in 2021 to work on her dissertation project, entitled “Identity Formation in Sacred Contexts of Aegean Thrace.” From 2023-2024, she held the Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation/Teaching Fellowship at Kenyon College. She is currently the Homer A. and Dorothy B. Thompson Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
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Alex Claman’s research interests include landscape archaeology, archaeological theory, gendered landscapes, digital methods, and modern engagement with the past. They have participated in field survey projects on the Greek mainland, Sardinia, and the Cyclades, and excavated on Crete. They received a BA in Classical Studies from Carleton College in 2017, then earned an MA in Classics (specializing in Classical Archaeology) and an MS in Geography (with a certificate in GIS) from Texas Tech University in 2021. While at TTU, they completed their Master’s thesis, entitled “Toward a Morphic History of Landscape.” They started in the graduate program at UNC Chapel Hill in the fall of 2021. Alex completed their MA in Classical Archaeology at UNC Chapel Hill in the spring of 2023 and wrote a Master’s thesis entitled “The Coastscape of Hellenistic Halasarna, Kos.” They are currently in the process of developing their dissertation project, which will examine gendered sacred landscapes in Boeotia during the Hellenistic period.
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Allison Davis is a fourth-year Ph.D. student of Classical Archaeology with an emphasis on the prehistoric Aegean. She graduated with an A.B. degree in Classics and Archaeology from the College of Charleston in 2019 and received M.A. degrees in Classical Studies from Tulane University in 2021 and Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Her thesis, titled “Reconsidering Continuity at Nichoria from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age,” explored material culture from the region of Messenia in Greece, where she has excavated since 2017. Her dissertation will examine moments of transition in prehistoric Aegean societies, focusing on communities at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Her broader interests include Minoan and Mycenaean socio-political networks, interconnectivity across the Mediterranean, digital humanities, and geospatial modeling.
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Emily Dixon received a BA in Latin and Greek with a minor in Archaeology from the University of Richmond in 2023. She is currently working toward an MA in Classical Archaeology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has participated in fieldwork at historic sites in Virginia and now works as the lab supervisor for the Santa Susana Archaeological Project in Portugal. Her interests include Roman material culture, aspects of identity in the Roman world, and the archaeology of Roman provinces.
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Carolyn Dorey is a graduate student studying archaeology in the Classics Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She received an A.B. in Classics, History, and Archaeology at the College of Charleston before going on to receive her M.A. in Classics from Tulane University. Carolyn has worked with the Athenian Agora excavations, both excavating in the field and doing archival work. Her interests include ancient health and medicine, domestic life, and death and burial in Archaic and Classical Greece.

Morgan Eriksen graduated with a dual BA in Classical Languages and History from Ohio University in 2021. She received her MA in Classical Studies from Indiana University in 2023 and is now pursuing an MA in Classical Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has recently served as an assistant trench supervisor for the American Excavations at Morgantina and participated in the IFA-NYU Excavations at Selinunte. Her research interests focus on cultural interactions between communities in Sicily and those on the Italian mainland, particularly in Southern Italy during the Hellenistic and Roman Republic periods.
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Rebecca Gaborek received dual B.A.s (summa cum laude) in Classical Archaeology and Anthropology from the College of William and Mary in 2019, where she completed an honors thesis exploring the social function of nature imagery depicted in Pompeian wall-paintings (awarded Highest Honors). In 2022, she earned her M.A. in Classical Archaeology at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her M.A. thesis argues that the owners of the House of the Vestals, Pompeii, manipulated sound in their domestic space to cultivate a pleasurable, status-boosting sensory escape embedded within the urban fabric of the city. She is now pursuing her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology. Rebecca’s primary interests are Roman visual and material culture, particularly Roman houses and their gardens through the lenses of their décor, internal spatial relationships, and potentiality for investigating embodied experience. She has excavated most recently as a trench supervisor at the Casa della Regina Carolina at Pompeii, Italy.
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Maija Gierhart graduated from the University of Kansas in 2020 with a Bachelor’s in classical languages, geology, and Italian. At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, she is currently working towards an M.A. in classical archaeology, with a focus on the Bronze Age and Mycenaean studies. Her interests within the Bronze Age include ceramics, Messenian archaeology, Linear B, Mycenaean religion, and interactions between Anatolia and Greece. The past three years have seen her work as a ceramics specialist at the Iklaina Archaeological Project.

Bailey Hall received her B.A. in Classical Studies (Classical Archaeology concentration) from the College of William and Mary in 2018 and went on to earn a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Classical Studies from William and Mary in 2023. Prior to embarking on her Post-Baccalaureate coursework, she taught English as a Second Language in northern Thailand. She has participated in fieldwork at Segesta, Sicily, and most recently spent two consecutive seasons excavating at Ancient Messene. Bailey’s broad research interests include Greek architecture and urban development of the Archaic Period, specifically, examining the manifold ways in which the built environment and community shape one another via the articulation of collective memory and civic identity. She is also interested in Greek epigraphy and ritual theory.
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Sarah Hilker is a PhD candidate currently working on her dissertation, which examines the relationship between Mycenaean residential spaces, social structure, and settlement patterns. In addition to the Bronze Age Aegean, her broader interests include ancient technology and craft production, ancient trade, archaeological science, and digital humanities. Sarah has a B.A. in Classics from the University of Pennsylvania (2010), a M.Sc. in the Technology and Analysis of Archaeological Materials from University College London (2012, dissertation on Mesopotamian Polychromy), and a M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014, thesis on Aegean Bronze Age wall paintings). She has served as a trench supervisor at several sites in Greece (Thorikos, Iklaina, Ancient Corinth, Azoria) and excavated in Italy (Morgantina, Cinigiano). She has also spent time at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, first participating in the Regular Program (2017-2018, Emily Townsend Vermeule Fellow), and then returning to conduct dissertation research (2019-2020 as a Fulbright Student Fellow; 2020-2021).
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Emily Lime (MA in Classical Archaeology- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ’20, MA in Classical Art and Archaeology- University of Michigan ’17, BA in History, Classical Archaeology- University of Michigan ’16) is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from UNC-Chapel Hill. Emily’s work concerns the visual and material culture of the Ancient Roman world, with research interests in garden spaces, Roman wall painting, multimedia programming, and the remediation of Greek art in Roman visual culture. Her Master’s Thesis at UNC examined the remediation of sculptural elements into domestic garden paintings through the lens of Foucault’s heterotopia. Emily’s dissertation project, “After the Earthquake: Strategies of Remediation in Pompeiian Gardens (62 – 79 CE),” examines the environmental and aesthetic impacts of the 62 CE earthquake on Pompeian domestic gardens. Other research interests include Roman wall painting, the depiction of dogs in ancient art, the reuse and reworking of marble sculpture, and the reception of classical myth in Renaissance to contemporary art. She worked in the Finds Lab at the Gabii Project Roma for 5 years, and currently serves as Finds Registrar for the Casa della Regina Carolina Project at Pompeii.
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Bryanna Lloyd is a graduate student studying archaeology in the Classics Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. (Hons) in Classical Archaeology from King’s College London in 2014 and her M.A. in Archaeological Studies from Yale University in 2016, where she wrote her thesis on pXRF analysis of green glazed vessels from the Syro-Roman site of Dura Europos. Her M.A. thesis at UNC was titled “The House in Iron Age Italian Thought”. She has excavated at Pollena Trocchia in the Bay of Naples and the Etruscan city of Vulci. Bryanna is interested in museum education and curation and has worked as an intern at Yale University Art Gallery and the Ackland Art Museum.
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Jackson Miller is a PhD candidate working on a dissertation that engages with the formation of contexts and stratigraphy to examine how people’s repeated and ritualized material interactions with sanctuaries in the Aegean contributed to these sites’ formation and development during the tenth through sixth centuries BCE. He received his B.A. in Classical Archaeology and French from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and an M.A. in Classical Archaeology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2020. His Master’s thesis, titled “Rethinking the Achilles at Skyros Myth: Two Representations from Pompeii,” reconsidered two visual assemblages to demonstrate how they helped highlight themes of tenderness, love, and loss in two depictions of Achilles. Beyond his dissertation work, he is interested in Greek colonization, the construction of masculinity in ancient Greece, and reception of the Greek past at the modern Olympics. He has excavated at sites across Greece and has just spent the last two years at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, first as the Fowler Merle-Smith Fellow (2022-2023), and then as the Gorham Phillips Stevens Fellow (2023-2024).
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Cole Warlick is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics from UNC Chapel Hill. He received a B.A. in Classics and Anthropology from Davidson College in 2019. In 2021, he completed his Master’s Thesis at UNC on the reorganization of the property and the relationship between domestic space and productive horticulture in the House of the Ship Europa. Cole’s research interests center around social aspects and mechanisms of the economy, agriculture and horticulture, and identity and lived experience within the Roman Empire. He is also interested in museums and public engagement with archaeological heritage. He has worked as a fellow at the Ackland Art Museum and excavated in Cyprus and Southern Italy. Cole is very interested in the application of digital tools and data analysis in the study of the Ancient Mediterranean and currently works on the GIS and records database for the Casa della Regina Carolina Project at Pompeii.
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Anna Balaguer graduated from Colorado College with a B.A. in Classics (minors in German and Philosophy) in 2019 and completed her M.A. in Classics at the University of Minnesota in 2021. After spending two years teaching high school Latin and English in Northern California, she joined the Classics graduate program at UNC in the fall of 2023. She is interested in Greek and Latin poetry (especially pastoral and elegy) and questions related to intertextuality, intratextuality, genre, and metapoetics.

Ryan Baldwin is a PhD candidate in Classics (Historical Emphasis). He received his B.A. in History (2017) and his M.A. in Comparative Studies (2019) from Brigham Young University, and then earned a second M.A. in Classics (2021) from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he gave a historical reading of Pindar’s Olympian 1 for his MA thesis. Ryan’s dissertation focuses on Lucan’s use of Lucretian and Epicurean language in his Bellum Civile to highlight the fragility and dissolution of the human body, the Roman state, the cosmos, and memory. He also works on intertextuality and intersections between Classical and early Christian language and literature, where he has analyzed and compared passion narratives with Achilles Tatius’ novel, Classical and Christian use of gender in Prudentius’ Peristephanon, and Proba’s use of Vergil’s Nisus and Euryalus in her cento. Other interests include “Silver Age” Latin, imperial literature, and violence in the ancient world. Ryan is spending the 2024-25 academic year in Rome as the Berthe M. Marti Fellow.
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Nick Bolig received his B.A. in Latin and Business from Kalamazoo College in 2014. Upon graduating, Nick worked for two years as a high school Latin teacher in Detroit, Michigan. Nick went on to receive a Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Classics from the University of Pennsylvania (2017) and to receive an M.A. in Classics at the University of Kansas (2019) where he wrote his thesis, “Dramatizing the Divine: An Examination of Divination in Greek Tragedy and Euripides’ Helen.” He is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include ancient Greek drama, divination, historiography, and genre.
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Kyle Cornman graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2019 with B.A.’s in Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies and International Politics. He thereafter pursued further study in Greek and Latin, first spending a year at Georgetown University in the Post-baccalaureate program, before moving to Burlington Vermont to receive a M.A. at the University of Vermont. He has since acquired his second M.A. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having written a thesis on Vergil’s Aeneid titled “vitam pro laude pacisci: Youth and Age in the Funeral Games of Anchises and Their Implications.” He continues to pursue his PhD at UNC in Classical Philology (Historical Emphasis). His research interests center largely on Classical Greek prose, especially the works of Thucydides, Xenophon and Herodotus, and he intends to focus his doctoral research on the narrative structure of the former’s History of the Peloponnesian War.

Alex Kiprof received his B.A. in Classics and History from St. Olaf College in 2021. He then received a M.A. in Classics from the University of Arizona in 2023. His Master’s thesis investigated the intertextual relationship between the purported last words of Alexander the Great and the golden apple of Eris/Discord. Amongst other intertextual readings, it argued that the analogy between Alexander and Eris presents the division of Alexander’s empire as a cyclical continuation of the Trojan War. He is now pursuing his Ph.D. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Alex’s research interests include the productive interaction between Greco-Roman poetry and historiography, intertextuality, ancient Macedonian history and its historiographers, Statius, and Classical reception in Colonial America.
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Will Lewis received his BA in Classics from Wake Forest University in 2021. His honors thesis, titled “Visualizing Comedy: Network Mapping Plautus,” used the digital visualization software Gephi combined with a close reading of the Latin text to create a wide range of new observations for roughly half of Plautus’ extant plays. Following his graduation, Will bounced around the corporate world for a few years, working first in finance and later, the museum industry. During this time, Will maintained his passion for Classics by conducting independent research on the Greek historiographer, Herodotus, particularly focusing on his presentation of the Egyptian Fish-Eaters in the Nile River Delta. Will is interested in a broad range of topics in the ancient world, including Greek historiography, Greek and Roman constructions of foreign identity, Latin elegy, Roman comedy, and digital humanities.
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Aidan Mahoney received his B.A. in Classical Languages and Literature from the University of California–Davis in 2018. While at Davis, Aidan attended the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome during the fall semester of 2016. From Davis Aidan went on to complete his M.A. at the University of Kansas and received his degree in 2020. At Kansas, Aidan wrote his thesis entitled Exploring Gendered Violence from Tragic Episodes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He is now pursuing an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His interest include Augustan poetry, Roman elegy, gender and violence in Ovid’s poetry, and Greek tragedy.
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Sean Moorman attended the College of Charleston until 2016, where he earned his A.B. in Classics and his B.A. in History. As an undergraduate, he focused largely on the political and social history of Russia and the Soviet Union in addition to Greek, Latin, and ancient history courses. Before pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he earned an M.A. degree in Classics at the University of Maryland in 2020. His interests mainly lie in Greek and Roman historiography, specifically Thucydides’ and Sallust’s critical reflections on empire and political elites. More recently, he has become interested in Seneca’s tragedies and their relationship to his own philosophical concepts in De Ira and De Clementia.
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S. Elizabeth Needham received her B.A. in Classical Languages and in German cum laude from Duke University in 2019, where she wrote a senior honors thesis on the relationship between plants and power in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In 2021 she completed her M.A. at UNC with a thesis on the construction of imagined space in Sappho. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “The Politics of Plants: Greek and Roman Poetry through a Botanical Lens,” comprises a survey of the “politics of plants” in poetry across the ancient Mediterranean. These politics range from the interpersonal and erotic to the Augustan and imperial; she aims to demonstrate the viability of a botanical lens and what it can reveal about human interactions with the natural world and each other. Elizabeth’s other research interests include Greek melic poetry and performance, Ovid, gender and sexuality in antiquity, and phenomenological approaches to literature.
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Ashley Walker received her BA in Classics and English Literature from Lee University in 2020, where she wrote a senior thesis on epigraphs from classical literature in T. S. Eliot’s poetry. She then completed her MA in Classics at the University of Notre Dame in 2022. Her MA thesis, titled “Using, Refusing, and Becoming Exempla: Debating Exemplarity in Heroides 5 and 16-17,” examined a shared discourse about the use of exempla in Paris, Helen, and Oenone’s letters of Ovid’s Heroides. Ashley’s research interests include Greek and Latin poetry (especially Augustan poetry, lyric, and elegy), genre, gender, and inter/intratextuality.
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Robert Ward graduated from the University of Kansas in 2023 with a BA in Classical Languages, Classical Antiquity, and English. He wrote a senior thesis on the intertextual relationships between Horace and Propertius’ later works of poetry. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Robert’s research interests include Latin poetry, its intertextuality with Greek poetry, and literary theory especially in its use within philology.
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Post-Baccalaureate Students

Lukas Irwin
Jakob Eddinger-Smith