Alex Tadel

Thesis title:

Why are there so few learned women?: The female Neo-Latin authorial voice in the Venetian Quattrocento

I am a second-year PhD candidate, supervised by Professor Ingrid de Smet and Dr Elena Giusti. My PhD will provide the first study dedicated entirely to Latin letters by fifteenth-century Veneto women, a landmark in the development of early modern female authorship. I will aim not only to engage with the relatively well known collections of Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele and Laura Cereta, but also to shed light on their unknown contemporaries through archival research.

Research Area

Classical Reception
Classics

Publications

Articles:

2022. 'Isotta Nogarola: Elegija v slavo cianskega podeželja', Keria: Studia Latina et Greca 24.1: 195-202

Book reviews:

2023. Review of Brizio, Elena and Marco Piana (eds). Idealizing Women in the Italian Renaissance (2022), Modern Language Review 118.4: 629-630

Non-specialist audiences:

2022. 'The Eternal Rome in Mobster Show Suburra: Blood on Rome', Pop Matters (online)

2021. 'Reading Like a Roman: Vergilius Vaticanus and the Puzzle of Ancient Book Culture', The Public Domain Review (online)

2020. 'Retelling the Minotaur Myth for the Age of Isolation', 3AM Magazine (online)

2020. 'Ancient Greek Abstract Art', Sententiae Antiquae (online)

Conferences

'Between Friends: Mixed-Gender Humanist Exchange in the Letters of Isotta Nogarola and Damiano dal Borgo', Centre for the Study of the Renaissance Postgraduate Seminar (Warwick, 14 March 2024)

'Polissena Messalto Grimaldi: An Early Quattrocento Female Latinist', Final Talk at Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies (Innsbruck, 14 December 2023)

'Unable to Function as Drama: Reimagining Orestes with Theatre of the Absurd', Institute of Classical Studies Postgraduate Seminar (London, 5 March 2021)

Public Engagement & Impact

Ashmolean Museum · Tour Guide (Oxford, 2020)

Cambridge Latin Play 2018 · Director (Cambridge, Queens' College Theatre, 2018)

Other Research Interests

Drama

Philosophy

Linguistics

Teaching

Volunteer Language Teacher, Student Action for Refugees (Coventry, 2023)

Volunteer Language Teacher, Slovene Philanthropy (Ljubljana, 2021 – present)

Teaching Assistant, Bluebridge Education Group (Cambridge, 2019)

Fellowships

Fellow at Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies (Innsbruck, November-December 2023)

Education

University of Oxford · MSt Greek and Latin Languages and Literature · 2019 - 2020 · Distinction

University of Cambridge · BA Classics · 2016 - 2019 · II.i

Organisation & Admin

Co-organiser, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance Postgraduate Seminar (2023-present)

Website Administrator, Society for Neo-Latin Studies (2024-present)