It is with great excitement that we announce that Classics' Visiting Scholar, Dimitri Nakassis, has been selected as a MacArthur Fellow!
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Widely known as the "Genius" grants, the MacArthur fellowships are awarded to only a very select few people chosen for their extraordinary creativity and achievements, talent and dedication, and "a marked capacity for self-direction."
For the official description of Nakassis' work and the overwhelming reasons for his selection, see:/
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And for a brief description of his work while with us last year as a Visiting Associate Professor, in the 2015 Newsletter
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Congratulations Dimitri!
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Dimitri Nakassis (Ph.D. Texas 2006) studies听the material and textual听production of early Greek communities, especially of the Mycenaean societies of Late Bronze Age Greece. His听book,听Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos听(Brill 2013), developed new methods听for investigating individuals named in the administrative Linear B texts听and argued听from this听evidence that Mycenaean society was far less hierarchical and much more dynamic than it had been considered in the past.听He has published articles and book chapters听on Homer and Hesiod, Greek religion and history, archaeological survey,听Linear听A,听and the听economy, society and prosopography of the Mycenaean world.听He is currently writing a second book on political authority in Mycenaean Greece. He is听co-director (with Sarah James and Scott Gallimore)听of听the Western Argolid Regional Project (WARP), a diachronic archaeological survey in southern Greece, and co-director (with Kevin Pluta)听of the "Digital Nestor" project, which involves the digital documentation of all the administrative documents from the "Palace of Nestor" at Pylos. In 2015 he was named a MacArthur fellow.