Winner. Scientist of the Year 2017. The Humanities

Eleanor Dickey

Academic title, degree: Ph.D.
Fields of science: History of the Latin and Greek languages
Research interest: Greek and Latin languages and literature; ancient scholarship; ancient bilingualism and second-language learning; politeness and forms of address in Latin and Greek; sociolinguistics of ancient languages
Institution: University of Reading
Position: Professor of Classics
Country: UK

Professor Dickey grew up in the US and attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania (BA and MA 1989) before doing doctoral work at Oxford (MPhil Balliol 1991, DPhil Merton 1994). She began studying Greek at age 18. After Oxford Prof. Dickey taught at the University of Ottawa in Canada (1995-9), Columbia University in New York (1999-2007), and the University of Exeter (2007-13) before coming to Reading in 2013. She has spent periods of leave at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1998-9), the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC (2002-3), All Souls College Oxford (2005-6) and Merton College Oxford (2006).

Prof. Dickey devoted herself to study the ancient world and its languages and literatures; the common thread connecting her different research projects is a desire to use rigorous, fact-based analysis to shed new light on literary texts and on the world and thought processes of the people who wrote those texts. Over the years Dr. Dickey's research has focused on the sociolinguistics of Greek and Latin (how factors like age, gender, and social class influenced the language that ancient speakers used), the history of Greek and Latin (their development from Indo-European through the ancient languages we usually study to the modern Romance languages and modern Greek), how those languages were taught and analyzed in antiquity (ancient scholarship and language teaching in antiquity), and language contact in antiquity (especially Greek speakers learning Latin and the influence of Latin on Greek). Some of her work is interdisciplinary, involving both Classics and linguistics.

Prof. Dickey wrote and published “Learning Latin the ancient way: Latin textbooks from the ancient world”. Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Dickey received a Marc Fitch Fund Small Research Grant from the British Academy, and has benefited from AHRC funding which has allowed her to trial Latin language textbooks in local schools.