Research Areas

classical archaeology; Aegean prehistory; mortuary archaeology; pottery and material culture; identity and ethnicity; state formation and social structure; administration, writing and literacy; cultural heritage

Biography

Sophie is a PhD Candidate in Classical Archaeology.  She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Classical Studies and Art History from Tulane University in 2015.  She completed the Post-Baccalaureate program in Classical Languages at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the PhD program in Classical Archaeology at Berkeley in 2016, where she earned her M.A. in Classical Archaeology in 2018 with a thesis on the construction of identity in Late Bronze Age Cretan cemeteries.

Sophie studies Aegean prehistory with a focus on the Mycenaean period, mortuary archaeology, and pottery and material culture.  She is an active field archaeologist with excavation experience in Crete and the Peloponnese.  She is currently a senior staff member of the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology excavation projects at the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea, the Late Bronze Age cemetery of Aidonia, and Petsas House at Mycenae.  

During the 2021-2022 academic year, Sophie was a Regular Member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where she held the Emily Townsend Vermeule Fellowship.  As an Associate Member of the ASCSA in 2022-2023 she held the Ione Mylonas Shear Advanced Fellowship.  

Her dissertation "Death and Taxes: Mortuary Perspectives on Non-Palatial Communities in the Mycenaean Argolid (ca. 1600-1070 BCE) examines the distribution and use of chamber tombs in the Late Bronze Age northeastern Peloponnese from the perspective of small local communities as they responded to the increasing authority of palatial centers in the region over the course of the Mycenaean period.

At Berkeley, Sophie has taught Introduction to Greek Archaeology, Introduction to Ancient Greece, Introduction to Roman Civilization, and Latin 1 and 2. She is also a Residential Faculty member and Program Director at Bowles Hall Residential College, where she works closely with the 187 undergraduate residents who make up the community.