Welcome, Tessa!

Tessa Little is the Institute's new intern in Athens, and will be with us until early April. She has already begun an inventory of the Institute's library holdings of books and monographs, and she will be correcting and updating the electronic catalogue also.

Tessa is a recent graduate of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, with a Master’s degree in Classical text and culture.  As an undergraduate, she received a Bachelor’s degree in history and a Bachelor’s degree in Greek and Latin.  As a Master’s candidate, she focused her research interests on ancient history and languages.  Although she has broadly studied many areas within ancient Greek and Roman civilization, she is particularly interested in Roman social and cultural history in the late Republican and early Imperial periods.  Within this framework, she is specifically concerned with exploring human/animal relationships in the Roman Empire, particularly in spectacle.

In the Summer of 2013, Tessa participated in the Burgaz Harbor Project on the Datça Peninsula in Turkey.  Through her participation in the project, Tessa was able to expand her connections by meeting students from Texas A&M, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University.  Additionally, the project’s focus on harbor construction and function allowed Tessa to better understand some of the challenges concerning the discovery of evidence underwater.  Tessa published a guest blog post on the Institute of Nautical Archaeology’s website describing some of these challenges, particularly as they relate to finding evidence of animals.  This past summer, Tessa completed her Major Research Project on animals in Plutarch, for which she won the Jack M. Miller excellence in research award, and graduated from the Master’s program at Brock. 

Following the completion of her Master’s degree, Tessa gained a position at Marion Technical College as an adjunct faculty member.  In addition to teaching, Tessa has been continuing her research on animals in ancient Roman society and hopes to obtain her PhD.

Welcome, Tessa! We look forward to working with you!

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director