Michael received a B.A. with Highest Honors in Philosophy and a B.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia in 2015. His honors thesis dealt with competing theories of practical rationality in connection with Socrates’ theory of pleasure in Protagoras. After undertaking an independent research project on Works and Days at the Seminar für Klassische Philologie at the Universität Heidelberg, he entered the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he wrote a thesis on non-human animal perception in Hierocles’ Elements of Ethics.
Michael’s hobbies include cycling and devouring news about Chicago municipal politics.