Tom Davies *20 joins faculty at the University of Melbourne

Princeton Classics is delighted to congratulate Dr. Thomas Davies *20 on his appointment to the University of Melbourne, where he will teach as Lecturer in Classics and Archaeology. In his words, this permanent, research-oriented position (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the United States) will see him teaching the history, cultures, and literatures of Bronze and Iron Age Afroeurasia, building "the existing discipline of Classics and Archaeology into a comprehensive program on the ancient Afroeurasian world."

According to Dr. Davies, who called the job "a wonderful fit for me," his new position draws directly on his work at Princeton Classics, which "focused on setting early Greek philosophy in a broader context of cosmological inquiry in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, and India." While at Princeton, his illustrious performance record won him the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship, among others. "I'll also teach Akkadian language," said Davies, by way of example, "which I first learned on an IHUM Fellowship year at Princeton and later studied with Johannes Haubold."

Davies received his doctorate in late 2020 for his dissertation "Greek Cosmology and Its Bronze Age Background," which rewrote the history of ancient Greek thought by uncovering its naturalistic antecedents in philosophical traditions across the ancient Mediterranean. In addition to co-advisors Brooke Holmes and J.T. Katz, his committee included Haubold and Benjamin Morison, who wrote of the thesis as "a fantastic achievement... Tom has produced a work of massive erudition." 

Originally from New Zealand, where he studied at the University of Otago, Davies returned to campus in November of 2022 to deliver a talk entitled, "Horses, Wheels, and Languages: Indo-European in the Ancient Near East."

Davies joins a distinguished cohort of recent Princeton Classics graduate alumni hired into faculty teaching positions in the last year, including Tyler Archer, Malina Buturović, Katie Dennis, William Dingee, and Bryson Sewell.