Chris received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Yale University in 2012 with a double major in Classics and Physics. Before beginning graduate school, he worked for several years as a data science and IT consultant specializing in optimization and database design. His dissertation, titled Pass the Wine: Feasting and Social Distinction in the Connected Mediterranean, compares food cultures in the Greek, Etruscan, Phoenicio-Punic, and Mesopotamian worlds from the 7th through mid-5th centuries BCE. Chris takes an integrated approach that relies on textual, material, and iconographic evidence and is informed by the anthropological literature on foodways, feasting, and social distinction.
Chris spent the Spring 2018 semester at the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik in Munich, where he completed research projects on the Archaic Greek symposion (the seed of his dissertation) and on the role of moderatio in Tiberian ideology and Tacitean historiography. Chris also maintains an interest in Digital Humanities—particularly in digital critical editions and the new opportunities they present for philological analysis—and participated in the Digital Latin Library’s summer workshop in 2017.