My research focuses on the future in Greco-Roman Antiquity. I look at how ideas about the future were articulated in philosophical, literary, and religious texts – and at how technical disciplines such as medicine, astronomy, and divination framed their claims to provide accurate knowledge of the future. My current book project, In the Grip of the Future, explores how a new concept of the future – as a predictable, mappable space – emerged in the first two centuries AD in Greco-Roman thought.

My first book, Origen and Prophecy (2021), examined the concept of prophecy in the work of the Christian philosopher Origen of Alexandria (c.180-250 AD). I set Origen’s work against the backdrop of Classical and Hellenistic Greek philosophy as well as against ancient Jewish ideas about prophets and prophecy. In doing so, I showed how Origen synthesised ideas about fate, free will, divine foreknowledge and moral authority in a complex framework of textual readings. I’ve also written on a number of other Greek authors, including Ptolemy, Vettius Valens, Galen, and Artemidorus, and co-edited a book on Divination and Revelation in Later Antiquity.