My thesis, supervised by Prof. Llewelyn Morgan, examines the enduring search for Alexander in the case of the Kalasha, a population residing in the western edge of Pakistan who are rumoured to be descendants of Alexander (or Alexander’s army). A hot topic in Imperial Britain in the late 19th century, the Kalasha then fade from scholarly and popular memory, only to resurface during the height of the dispute over the claim to the name Macedonia, when the Greek government developed interest. My thesis combines work from the fields of reception theory, Alexander studies and literary criticism to examine the resonances of Alexander and the Kalasha in the context of both Victorian British and modern Greek geopolitics. The study will illuminate the significance of the imaginary story not only to narratives of Alexander but to narratives of identity and ideology, and expose the position that myth occupies in discourse by examining and comparing how and why 19th century Britain and modern-day Greece both sought and found different Alexanders in the Kalasha people.
Beyond my doctoral thesis, I am interested broadly in reception; gender and sexuality in the ancient world; and Latin poetry, particularly Martial. My previous work investigated male-male weddings in Ancient Rome and the history of their reception, with special reference to Martial 1.42 and 12.42.
