Ph.D. Alexandra Madeła

Biography

I gained both my BA in Classics (2016) and my PhD (2021) from Trinity College Dublin. I went on to work as an Assistant Lecturer at Maynooth University (2021) and an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews (2021-2022), before returning to Trinity College as an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2023). Since October 2023, I am at the University of Warsaw as a CRAC Postdoctoral Fellow. My research interests include late antique Greek epic (especially the Argonautica by Orpheus), the Argonautic myth, late antique versions of the Troy myth (particularly Dares Phrygius’ De Excidio Troiae Historia), and ancient scholarship on Homer. My current project, entitled “Mapping out Homer’s blanks: late antique fiction writers as Homeric scholars” examines the impact of ancient philological scholarship on late antique epic.

Most important scholarly articles

“Qui volunt eos cognoscere, Argonautas legant: An ambiguous reference in Dares Phrygius’ De Excidio Troiae Historia.” (forthcoming in Mnemosyne) https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525x-bja10214
Review of “Myth, Religion, Tradition, and Narrative in Late Antique Greek Poetry (ed. N. Kröll). Vienna 2020.” In: Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft, 74, 96-101 (2021) https://diglib.uibk.ac.at/AAHG/periodical/titleinfo/7299342
“The formulaic diction of the Orphic Argonautica in Context: A Comparison with Nonnus’ Dionysiaca.” In: B. Verhelst (ed.), Nonnus in Context IV: Poetry at the Crossroads. Leuven, 151-68 (2022) https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.6988022 https://www.peeters-leuven.be/detail.php?search_key=9789042945166&series_number_str=0&lang=en
“The Hidden Third Siren of the Orphic Argonautica.” Mnemosyne, 73, 112-22 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1163/1568525X-12342626
“The Sacred Island: An Ancient Name for Ireland.” Classics Ireland, 26, 25-9 (2019) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926264 https://depot.ceon.pl/handle/123456789/23667