FACULTY DIRECTORY Q-T
Meet our experts!
Owen Rees
"The Spartan Mirage", "Xenophon"
Owen Rees is an ancient historian and lecturer in Applied Humanities at Birmingham Newman University. Owen is the founder and lead editor for Bad Ancient, which brings together a growing network of specialists to fact-check common claims made about the ancient world and expose the prevalent pseudohistory in the modern day. He has written on all sorts of topics of ancient history, from Greek warfare to ancient tattoos. Most recently Owen published his first trade book: The Far Edges of the Known World: A New Perspective on our Ancient Civilizations (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Michael Scott
"Themistocles"
Michael is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International affairs and a Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. He is also a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Honorary Citizen of Delphi, Greece and President of the Lytham Saint Annes Classical Association.
He was formally the inaugural Director of the Warwick Institute of Engagement and Director of Warwick Classics Network at the University of Warwick; as well as Trustee and Director of Classics for All; a member of The Royal Society Public Engagement Committee; and a member of the Latin Excellence Project Expert Group, appointed by the Minister at the Department for Education, UK.
He is the author of multiple books on the ancient Mediterranean world as well as ancient Global History; and has written and presented a wide range of TV and Radio documentaries for National Geographic, History Channel, ITV and the BBC.
Debby Sneed
"Disability in Ancient Greece"
Dr. Debby Sneed is Assistant Professor in Comparative World Literature and Classics at California State University, Long Beach. She also serves as the Field Supervisor of the Athenian Agora Excavations and Summer Training Program. She is a specialist in physical disability in ancient Greece.
Dan Stewart
"What is 'Classics' Anyway?", "Pausanias", "Restoration and Anastylosis"
Dan Stewart is an Associate Professor of Ancient History in the School of Heritage and Culture at the University of Leicester. His research is on the intersection of text and material culture, particularly how it impacts understandings of archaeology in Greece. He will eventually have a book on the archaeological history of Sparta (with Bloomsbury), and is co-director of the Roman Knossos Project on Crete. Loves talking about himself in the third person.
Thomas Strunk
"Cato the Younger"
"Thomas E. Strunk is a professor of classical literature and ancient history at Xavier University in
Cincinnati, OH. He is the author of The Lives of Cato the Younger from Ancient Rome to Modern
America (University of Michigan Press, 2026), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Lessons for the
American People (Anthem Press, 2022), and History after Liberty: Tacitus on Tyrants,
Sycophants, and Republicans (University of Michigan Press, 2017). He is also the author of the
poetry collection Transfigurations (Main Street Rag, 2023). He has published articles on Tacitus,
Pliny, Dr. King as a reader of the classics, and Latin poetry and the music of Bob Dylan. His
literary work has appeared in The RavensPerch, Pensive, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel,
Northern Appalachia Review and East Fork Journal among others. Thomas has an MFA in
Creative Writing from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. in Classics from Loyola University
Chicago."
Kate Sumnall
"Boudica"
Kate Sumnall is Curator of London’s Prehistory at London Museum. Kate is a finds specialist who loves to explore the insights into people that objects hold. She enjoys interpreting the past, drawing on new research and evidence to explore ancient lives and place. Through her work, she seeks to build emotional connection between audiences and prehistory, finding the stories of people traditionally not centred in interpretations.
Jeremy Swist
"Julian"
Jeremy Swist is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa. His research focuses on pagan historiography, rhetoric, and philosophy under the later Roman Empire, especially the emperor Julian. He published his first monograph, Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth, and the Refounding of Rome with Oxford University Press in 2025. He is currently undertaking a new translation of Julian's works. Jeremy also specializes in the reception of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in heavy metal music, and is co-editing the forthcoming double-volume, Premodern Worlds in Heavy Metal Music with Palgrave Macmillan. He also has a chapter titled "National Socialist Black Metal and the Usurpation of Greece and Rome" in the forthcoming volume Abusing Antiquity? Classics and the Contemporary Far Right, co-edited by Helen Roche and Denise McCoskey (Bloomsbury, 2025).
Jeff Tatum
"Mark Antony"
Jeff Tatum lives in New Zealand where he is Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is keen on the history and literature of the Roman republic and has an abiding interest in Greek literature of the imperial age, especially Plutarch. His books include A History of Latin Literature from its Beginnings to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge 2024), with Laurel Fulkerson, Quintus Cicero: A Short Handbook on Canvassing for Office (Oxford 2018), Plutarch: The Rise of Rome (London 2017), with Chris Pelling and Ian Scott-Kilvert, Always I am Caesar (Oxford 2008), and The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (Chapel Hill 1999). He has also edited, with Diana Burton and Simon Perris, Athens to Aotearoa: Greece and Rome in New Zealand Literature and Society (Wellington 2017).
Zoé Elise Thomas
"Vercingetorix"
Dr. Zoé Elise Thomas (she/her) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman Studies at Millsaps College who currently works on the connections between architecture, identity, and Roman imperialism in Gaul, and her fieldwork specialty is in bioarchaeology. When Zoé isn’t grossing out her students with weird medical facts or forcing her Latin class to chant creepily, she’s usually found at home with her cats, Chicken and Shrimp, and her ever-growing plant collection. Her greatest claim to fame is she has “aura” according to her students, which both flatters and frightens her.
LJ Trafford
"Domitian"
L.J. Trafford studied Ancient History at the University of Reading and is the author of
‘The Four Emperors’ series. The series comprises four books – Palatine, Galba’s Men,
Otho’s Regret and Vitellius’ Feast – which cover the dramatic fall of Nero and the
chaotic year of the four emperors that followed. Palatine, published in 2015, received
an Editor’s Choice Mark from the Historical Novel Society. She has also written three
non-fiction books for Pen and Sword; How to Survive in Ancient Rome, Sex and
Sexuality in Ancient and Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors.
L.J. recently appeared as a talking head in the Channel 5 documentary, Emperor: The
Rise and Fall of Dynasty.