Lionel Pearson Fellowship Award Winners | Society for Classical Studies

2023-2024: Will Sieving, Oxford University

2022-2023: Dido Wang, Cambridge University

2021-2022: Uwade Akhere, Oxford University

2020-2021: Lydia Cawley, Cambridge University

2019-2020: Lauren Nguyen

Pearson Fellow, pursuing an MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature, St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford
B.A., Classics, Columbia University (2019)

2018-2019: Philip Wilson

My time on the Pearson fellowship helped me develop as a philologist by orders of magnitude. The pace of writing, the collegiality, and the absolute necessity of independent determination that one finds in the UK are all essential habits of mind to develop for the lifelong study of ancient thought. Likewise, learning that Classics are different in places with different histories has paradoxically made these texts much more familiar to me. To see Classics weave its way through so many peoples' varied histories shored up my own sense of what it means for a text to be a Classic, to endure. I thank the Pearson fellowship for making possible the happiest year of my life so far.

2017-2018 Peggy Xu

J.D. Candidate, Stanford Law School
Associate at the speechwriting firm West Wing Writers (2018-2020)
MPhil (with distinction), Classics, Trinity College, Cambridge University. Dissertation (supervised by M. Beard): “Roman Ethnography and the Rhetoric of Decline” (2018)
B.A., Classical Studies & Law, Letters, and Society, University of Chicago (2017)

As someone who has always held interdisciplinary interests in classics and contemporary politics, I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity at Cambridge to contextualize my own political work within a broader classical tradition, and to see also how my varied political interests could push me to ask more probing and more critical questions of the ancient world than I would have managed otherwise. I hope to eventually make a career out of political advocacy and public interest law, but will make use of the interdisciplinary ethos and analytical skills I acquired during my time at Cambridge for many years to come.

2016-2017 Elizabeth R. Lavender (née Ridgeway)

Ph.D. Candidate, Classics, Yale University
MSt, Greek and Roman History, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. Thesis: "Lumenque Tuae Praeluceo Vitae: Grandparents as Educators in the Late Antique West" (2017)
B.A., Greek, Latin, and Classical Culture, University of Georgia (2016)

I am hugely grateful to the SCS for making my time at Oxford possible. The Pearson Fellowship gave me the chance to complete a graduate-level research project, observe excellent scholars in action, and learn more about the diversity and vibrancy of our field.

2015-2016 Taylor Barinka

Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, Collaborative Program in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, University of Toronto
MSt, Ancient Philosophy, Worcester College, University of Oxford. Thesis: "The Sources of Value in Plato's Gorgias" (2016)
B.A., Classical Languages and Literature, University of Michigan (2015)

The Pearson Fellowship made possible one of the most formative years of my personal and academic life studying Ancient Greek Philosophy at the University of Oxford. My studies culminated in a thesis on Plato's account of the good in the Gorgias; and as a PhD student at the University of Toronto, I am reshaping the kernel of that thesis into a project on Plato's account of practical reason. As my studies progress, I continually return and respond to the wealth of inspiration I found at Oxford, in my rich surroundings and my exciting peers.

2014-2015 John Mulhall

Ph.D. Candidate, History, Harvard University
MSt, Ancient History, Linacre College, University of Oxford. Thesis: “Prefacing Imperial Ideology: Leo VI’s and Constantine VII’s Prooimia to Compilation Literature” (2015)
B.A., Ancient Greek, The College of William and Mary (2014)

There is no other way to put it than to say the Pearson changed my life. My intellectual development during the year I spent at Oxford is truly immeasurable. Indeed, many of the friends, mentors, and colleagues that I had the pleasure to have met still contribute to my development to this day. No amount of thanks could express the gratitude that I have for the endowment established by Lionel Pearson.

2013-2014 Erin Lam

Ph.D. Candidate, Classics, UC Berkeley
M.A., Classics, UC Berkeley (2016)
MPhil, Classics, King's College, Cambridge University. Thesis: "Locating the Elegiac Lover: the Establishment of Identity in Tibullus' Elegies” (2014)
B.A., Classical languages, and BS, Molecular Environmental Biology, UC Berkeley (2012)

My time at Cambridge, which was enabled by the Pearson, has been incredibly formative both personally and academically. The opportunity to experience a scholarly and pedagogical approach that is different to that of American institutions has broadened my own perspective for the better, and I have made some of my closest lifelong friends at King's College.

2012-2013 Hannah R. Silverblank

Visiting Assistant Professor, Classics, Haverford College (2017-2020)
DPhil, Classical Languages, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford (2017)
MSt, Greek and Latin Languages and Literature, Brasenose College, University of Oxford. Thesis: “The Voice of the Siren and its Reception in Opera” (2013)
B.A., Latin and Comparative Literature, Haverford College (2012)

During my Pearson Fellowship, I marveled at the Master’s education I received from the faculty based in the APGRD and the Classics faculty at the University of Oxford. My Master’s thesis, entitled ‘The Voice of the Siren and its Reception in Opera’ served as the capstone of my academic experience during my year as the Pearson Fellow, and through this research, I had the pleasure of exploring the mutually illuminating worlds of Greek myth and Western opera. I also wrote two other extended essays on multimedia reception, including ‘Looking Back at Orpheus: Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy as a Queer Re-reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses’ and ‘Spectral Presences and Absences in Anne Carson’s Antigonick,’ which went on to publication in the 2014 edition of Logeion. Outside of my own research and coursework, I attended and participated in various lectures, seminars, and research networks, including the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation group and the Race and Resistance network. During my Master’s year, I received outstanding teaching, guidance, and supervision from the world-class faculty at Oxford, all of which compelled me to remain at Oxford to pursue my doctorate in Greek poetry. I wrote my doctoral thesis on monsters and the sounds they make in Greek epic, lyric, and tragedy. I'd be happy to speak about my experience in more detail with any aspiring candidates for the Pearson Fellowship, and I can be reached by email at hsilverb@haverford.edu.

2011-2012 Melissa Anne Huber

Assistant Professor, History and Classics, Providence College
Ph.D., Classical Studies, Duke University. Dissertation: “Monumentalizing Infrastructure: Claudius and the City and People of Rome” (2019)
M.A., Classics, University of Reading. Thesis: "Reading Rome in Ovid's Fasti" (2012)
A.B., Classics and BS, Mathematics, College of Charleston (2011)

The Lionel Pearson Fellowship provided me with one of the most formative experiences of my career. The coursework, research, and connections I made during my time at the University of Reading and the British School at Rome continue to shape who I am as a scholar and teacher. I am incredibly thankful to have had this opportunity.