Princeton Classics is delighted to congratulate department graduate alum Marco Santini *21 on his appointment as Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh, beginning in January. This position, equivalent to Assistant Professor in the United States, will see Santini teaching courses in Greek history and developing new seminars with a special focus on cross-cultural interactions between Greece and Near Eastern civilizations.

“My teaching will be largely informed by methods and debates that made up a substantial part of my training as a doctoral student at Princeton,” said Dr. Santini, "such as the cultural biases hidden behind concepts like the ‘Orient,’ or the points of ‘dialogue’ between early Greek and Mesopotamian literature. I will also have an opportunity to turn into teaching important aspects of the research I have been carrying out for my PhD and onwards, namely the existence of a shared trajectory in the political development of Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean civilizations."

A native of the Italian town of Vasto, Santini attended the University of Pisa as an undergraduate, later gaining a Diploma di Licenza in Classical Philology, Linguistics, and History from the Scuola Normale Superiore. While at Princeton, Santini participated in numerous scholarly exchanges and was awarded a Merit Grant from the Center for Human Values, as well as the Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship for Research Abroad and the A. Watson Armour III '33 Centennial Fellowship. A current Fellow by Examination in Ancient History at Magdalen College, Oxford, Santini previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton Classics. 

“I will be thinking back of my Princeton years with gratitude to my teachers and friends!” he said.

In addition to his Edinburgh appointment, Santini has also been invited to give the Evans-Pritchard lectures in indigenous social relations at All Souls' College, Oxford, in Spring 2026. In the words of department chair Barbara Graziosi, this is “another sign of recognition for his important work on shared structures of political thought and practice across Greece, Anatolia, and the Levant during the Iron Age.”

Santini joins a remarkable cohort of recent Princeton Classics graduate alumni hired into faculty positions in the last two years, including Tyler Archer, Malina Buturović, Katie Dennis, Tom Davies, Sherry Lee, and Cait Mongrain.