Rosalind Thomas FBA is a Fellow and Tutor in Classics at

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

and professor of Ancient Greek history. She focuses on ancient literacy, oral tradition and performance culture as well as Greek law and society, Greek

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

, Greek relations with the

Persians The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian. ...

, and the Greek

polis ''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...

. She was elected as a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

in 2020.

Publications

Thomas has authored two books on the subject of

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

in Ancient Greece, and two on Greek historiography: *''Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens'', Cambridge University Press (1989); called "rich and invigorating" by the '' London Review of Books'' *''Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece'', Cambridge University Press (1992) *''Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion,'' Cambridge University Press (2000) * ''Polis Histories, Collective Memories and the Greek World,'' Cambridge University Press (2019). Aside from these, she has published many chapters in edited volumes, including but not limited to ''Cambridge Companion to Greek Law'' (ed. M. Gagarin & D. Cohen, 2005), ''Cambridge Companion to Herodotus'' (ed. J. Marincola and C. Dewald, 2006) and ''Fourth Century Greek Historiography: A Reevaluation'' (ed. N. Luraghi and R. Vattuone, 2012). She was a Program in the Ancient World Fellow at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Rosalind Living people Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Year of birth missing (living people) English classical scholars Women classical scholars Fellows of the British Academy