The department is very pleased to welcome Eleanor Dickey as Professor of Classics. Eleanor is a linguist with interests spanning Latin, Greek, and other ancient languages; her presence gives the Reading department the greatest concentration of Classical linguists in the UK outside of Oxford and Cambridge. Eleanor is American and was educated at Bryn Mawr College (BA, MA) and Oxford (MPhil, DPhil); she has previously worked at the University of Ottawa in Canada, Columbia University in New York, and the University of Exeter.

Eleanor arrived with a Leverhulme grant and will therefore be on leave for her first two years. Nevertheless she is visible in the department on Wednesdays and is enjoying getting to know colleagues and graduate students. As this is the first time in nearly 20 years that she has worked in a department containing other Classicists interested in language, she finds the atmosphere particularly congenial! (Besides, in this department are people who keep chickens and build coracles. How could one not be thrilled by that?)

Eleanor has published books on Greek forms of address (OUP 1996), Latin forms of address (OUP 2002), ancient Greek scholarship (OUP 2007), and the Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (vol 1 CUP 2012, vol 2 CUP forthcoming). (The colloquia are an elementary Latin reader composed for ancient Greeks learning Latin during the Roman empire; they contain little dialogues on topics like how to buy food, borrow money, hold a dinner party, or have an argument. Working on them has been tremendous fun!) Her current project is on Latin loanwords in Greek.

You can find out more about Eleanor at http://www.reading.ac.uk/classics/about/staff/e-dickey.aspx