My research explores how people in Imperial Asia Minor experienced and understood prophecy, oracles, and divine communication. I use insights from the Cognitive Science of Religion to investigate how ancient individuals and communities shaped their sense of religious identity and authority through ritual, text, and embodied experience. By analysing inscriptions, literary works, and ritual practices, I aim to uncover how cognitive processes—like memory, emotion, and social interaction—influenced prophetic experiences and their transmission. This approach helps us see prophecy not just as a religious phenomenon, but as a deeply human one—rooted in how minds and bodies together make meaning in complex cultural worlds.
Outside of my thesis, my historical interests include material culture, funerary rites, graffiti, religious art, Latin prose, Roman sculpture, Late Antique Church Fathers, and early Christian martyrdom. For my undergraduate dissertation, I wrote an interdisciplinary study exploring how Ptolemaic Greek women engaged in civic and domestic spaces, using comparative ethnography with modern Berber women. My master’s dissertation, “Montanism and Women: A Critical Analysis Using New Religious Movement and Feminist Theories,” examined the role of women within early Christian prophetic movements. In addition to my research, I have taught courses on Roman Britain and on women and gender in ancient Rome.
