Institute Leadership

Dr. Altay Coşkun

Director, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Professor of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo

Dr. Altay Coşkun is an internationally recognized historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specializing in Hellenistic kingdoms, Roman imperialism, and intercultural relations. His research examines political constitutions, diplomacy, citizenship, and the status of migrants and subjects across empires, with particular focus on the Seleucid Empire, the Maccabees, the Galatians, and the Black Sea world.

As Director of the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies, Dr. Coşkun leads a global network of scholars engaged in collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Since 2011, he has directed the Seleucid Study Group, organizing international workshops and conferences across Europe and North America. His work emphasizes comparative perspectives, long-term historical processes, and the dynamics of cultural exchange across imperial systems.

Dr. Coşkun’s scholarship is deeply embedded in international cooperation and has resulted in major collaborative initiatives, including research on Roman diplomacy, the Bosporan Kingdom, and the history of ancient Judaea. He is also actively involved in academic publishing, editorial work, and peer review for international funding agencies and presses.

Research areas: Hellenistic kingdoms (Seleucids, Attalids, Mithradatids); Roman imperialism and diplomacy; citizenship and migration; ancient historiography; Black Sea studies

Email: acoskun@uwaterloo.ca

Office: ML 228, University of Waterloo

Website: www.altaycoskun.com

Dr. Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Associate Professor, School of Humanities, Macquarie University

Dr. Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides is an internationally active scholar of the ancient Mediterranean whose research focuses on political authority, dynastic legitimacy, and ruler representation from the Hellenistic period through Late Antiquity. Her work explores how power, gender, and ideology were articulated in literary, philosophical, and visual sources across Greek, Roman, and early Christian contexts.

Her research places particular emphasis on kingship, imperial discourse, and the cultural mechanisms through which authority was negotiated, contested, and remembered. She has led and contributed to major international research projects on Seleukid and Ptolemaic royal imagery, leadership crises in the Eastern Roman Empire, and gender and embodiment in ancient philosophy and early Christianity.

Dr. Anagnostou-Laoutides’ scholarship is deeply interdisciplinary and collaborative. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and is the author of the forthcoming monograph From Vergil to the Bible: Leadership and Literature under Constantine (Liverpool University Press). Through her research and international partnerships, she contributes to broader conversations on political culture, representation, and cultural continuity across the ancient Mediterranean.

Research areas: Hellenistic and Roman kingship; ruler representation; gender and power; imperial ideology; Late Antique political thought; ancient philosophy and early Christianity

Email: eva.anagnostou-laoutides@mq.edu.au

Office: Macquarie University, Sydney

Dr. Alicia Batten

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Professor of Religious Studies and Theological Studies, University of Waterloo

Dr. Alicia Batten is a leading scholar of early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean world, with research focused on the social, cultural, and material contexts of biblical texts. Her work explores the origins and development of early Christian communities, with particular attention to the Letter of James, social history, dress and embodiment, and the history of biblical interpretation.

Her scholarship emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches that integrate literary analysis, archaeology, material culture, and social theory. She is currently writing a major commentary on the reception history and impact of the Letter of James and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and reference works on early Christian literature and ancient religion.

Dr. Batten is actively engaged in international scholarly collaboration and editorial work, including service with major journals and academic presses. Through her research, teaching, and public engagement, she contributes to broader conversations on religion, culture, and identity in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Research areas: Early Christianity; the Letter of James; social history of Christian origins; dress and embodiment in antiquity; biblical reception history

Email: abatten@uwaterloo.ca

Office: CGUC 2124, University of Waterloo

Dr. Riemer A. Faber

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Professor of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo

Dr. Riemer A. Faber is a scholar of Greek and Latin literature whose research brings together close literary criticism and long-range cultural transmission, from Hellenistic poetry to early modern neo-Latin scholarship. In classical antiquity, his work focuses on the intertextuality of Hellenistic Greek and Latin Augustan poetry—reading authors such as Homer, Theocritus, and Apollonius alongside Horace, Vergil, and other Latin poets.

A central interest in his scholarship is how texts engage other texts and other media, including the study of ekphrasis and intermedial description in epic poetry. His recent publications include edited volumes that highlight the comparative study of Hellenism and its afterlives, including Comparing Roman Hellenisms in Italy and Celebrity, Fame and Infamy in the Hellenistic World.

In the field of neo-Latin literature, Dr. Faber is especially interested in the New Testament scholarship of Erasmus. He has produced an edition of Erasmus’ Annotations on Galatians and Ephesians and a translation of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, and he continues to work on projects in early modern Latin prose as well as Greek and Latin pastoral and epic. He welcomes graduate students interested in Greek and Latin poetry, reception, and neo-Latin intellectual history.

Research areas: Criticism of Greek and Latin literature; Hellenistic Greek and Latin Augustan poetry; ekphrasis; neo-Latin literature (Renaissance and Reformation); Erasmus

Email: rfaber@uwaterloo.ca

Office: ML 226, University of Waterloo

Dr. Andrew Faulkner

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Professor of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo

Dr. Andrew Faulkner is a specialist in Greek literature whose research spans archaic and Hellenistic poetry through Late Antique, early Christian, and Byzantine texts. His work focuses especially on Greek poetic traditions, hymnography, and the reception of Homer, with particular attention to how literary forms, genres, and religious ideas develop across long historical periods.

A central thread in Dr. Faulkner’s scholarship is the continuity and transformation of Greek literary culture from the classical world into Christian and Byzantine contexts. His research brings together close philological analysis with broader questions of cultural transmission, religious expression, and literary adaptation, situating Hellenistic literature within a wider Mediterranean and post-classical framework.

At the University of Waterloo, Dr. Faulkner teaches courses in Greek poetry, Homer, Hellenistic literature, early Christian literature, patristics, and Byzantine texts at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He welcomes students interested in Greek literary traditions, religious literature, and the intersections between classical and Christian cultures.

Research areas: Greek poetry; hymnography; Homer; Hellenistic literature; early Christian literature; patristics; Byzantine literature

Email: afaulkner@uwaterloo.ca

Office: ML 240, University of Waterloo

Dr. Jacqueline Feke

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo

Dr. Jacqueline Feke is a scholar of ancient Greek science, mathematics, and philosophy, with particular interest in the history and philosophy of the physical and mathematical sciences. Her research examines how ancient Greek thinkers understood scientific knowledge as a philosophical and ethical way of life, paying close attention to the rhetoric, methodology, and intellectual self-presentation of ancient mathematicians and scientists.

Her work focuses especially on the philosophical systems of ancient Greek mathematical scientists, including Ptolemy. Her monograph Ptolemy’s Philosophy: Mathematics as a Way of Life (Princeton University Press, 2018) explores the role of mathematics in ancient philosophical practice and was shortlisted for the British Society for the History of Science’s Pickstone Prize. More broadly, her research bridges ancient science, philosophy, and intellectual history, situating scientific texts within their wider cultural and philosophical contexts.

Dr. Feke has held postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and has been a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto, and is cross-appointed to the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo.

Research areas: ancient science; ancient mathematics; ancient philosophy; history and philosophy of science; Greek mathematical sciences

Email: jfeke@uwaterloo.ca

Office: HH 326, University of Waterloo

Website: www.jacquelinefeke.com

Dr. Scott Gallimore

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Associate Professor of Archaeology, Wilfrid Laurier University

Dr. Scott Gallimore is an archaeologist specializing in Roman Greece and the ancient Mediterranean economy, with particular emphasis on landscape archaeology and material culture. His research focuses on the eastern Mediterranean, especially Crete and mainland Greece, where he examines economic networks, trade patterns, and regional connectivity through the study of ancient ceramics.

Much of Dr. Gallimore’s work investigates the transition from the Hellenistic to the Roman period, using amphorae and other ceramic evidence to reconstruct systems of production, distribution, and consumption. His monograph An Island Economy: Hellenistic and Roman Pottery from Hierapytna, Crete (2015) remains a foundational study of Cretan economic history, and his ongoing research continues to refine our understanding of Roman trade and regional economies.

Dr. Gallimore is a long-standing member of the Sikyon Excavation Project in Greece, where he serves as the Roman pottery specialist and Assistant Director. His current work focuses on the periphery of the ancient agora, with special attention to identifying and contextualizing Hellenistic-period activity. His research has been recognized with multiple University Merit Awards and an Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Excellence in Teaching Award.

Research areas: Roman archaeology; Roman Greece; ancient economy; landscape archaeology; Mediterranean trade networks

Email: sgallimore@wlu.ca

Office: Peters Building P350, Wilfrid Laurier University

Dr. David Porreca

Executive Committee, Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
Associate Professor of Classical Studies; Co-Director, Medieval Studies, University of Waterloo

Dr. David Porreca is a scholar of medieval intellectual history whose research focuses on the reception of pagan classical traditions in the Christian Middle Ages. His work centers especially on Hermetic literature and the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, tracing the transmission, interpretation, and transformation of ancient philosophical and religious texts from Late Antiquity through the medieval period.

Dr. Porreca has conducted extensive manuscript research in more than thirty libraries across Europe, developing expertise in palaeography, manuscript transmission, glosses, and the intellectual history of magic, astrology, and alchemy. In collaboration with Dan Attrell, he produced the first modern English translation of the Latin astral magic text Picatrix (2019), and more recently completed, with Attrell and Brett Bartlett, an annotated translation of Marsilio Ficino’s De Christiana religione.

Alongside his work on medieval philosophy and esotericism, Dr. Porreca has begun examining the rise, flourishing, and collapse of complex societies, with particular attention to the role of resource depletion in historical decline. His teaching spans Latin (Classical and Medieval), medieval society, ancient religious traditions, and the intellectual history of the ancient and medieval worlds.

Research areas: Medieval intellectual history; Hermetic tradition; ancient and medieval magic; astrology and alchemy; manuscript studies; reception of classical philosophy; Latin (Classical and Medieval)

Email: dporreca@uwaterloo.ca

Office: ML 208, University of Waterloo