Bio


Sinead is an ABD PhD candidate in the Department of Classics and is expecting to complete her dissertation in 2024. Her research investigates ancient Roman sexual culture and where it shows up in the landscape. It focuses on displays of sexuality that do not match up to any social or political identities, including statues of Priapus, emperors portrayed as sexual aggressors and agricultural language adopted as sexual slang.

Sinead comes from Auckland, New Zealand, where she received her M.A. with First Class Honours. Her M.A. thesis examined the reception of Martial’s sexually obscene homosexual epigrams in school texts and commentaries. Using a comprehensive statistical analysis, she argued that Victorian editors of Martial’s Epigrams expurgated the text to remove references to material they found offensive and to curate a culturally appropriate view of the ancient world for their schoolboy readers.

Sinead is also interested in the Digital Humanities, Data Science and programming. As a CESTA DH Graduate Fellow, she is developing an ngram viewer tool for the Latin literary canon.

Honors & Awards


  • Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, Stanford (2019-2023)
  • CESTA Digital Humanities Graduate Fellow, CESTA, Stanford (2022-23)

Professional Affiliations and Activities


  • Member, Society for Classical Studies (2020 - Present)
  • Member, Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies (2016 - Present)
  • Member, Australasian Society for Classical Studies (2014 - Present)

Education & Certifications


  • M.A. (1st class hons), The University of Auckland, Latin (2018)
  • Dip.Lang., The University of Auckland, Ancient Greek (2018)
  • B.A.(Hons) (1st class hons), The University of Auckland, Latin (2015)
  • B.A., The University of Auckland, Latin, Economics (2014)

2022-23 Courses