James Oakley

James Oakley is a Classicist and Egyptologist, currently working as a Teaching and Research Fellow in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His research primarily involves the comparative study of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian literature, especially that composed under the Roman Empire, to examine how authors across these cultures used literature (including the epic genre) to react to their changing worlds. His current research project is a phenomenological study of the construction of eastern space across three ancient works: the Roman poet Lucan’s epic Pharsalia, the Greek poet Nonnus’ epic Dionysiaca, and the Coptic version of the Alexander Romance and an encomium of Saint George. He has also worked on Greek and Latin interactions in epic, Egyptian concepts of time, and Latin elegiac poetry.