Background
University Edinburgh
I did my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in the summer of 2024. The degree was in New Testament and Early Christianity with a focus on textual criticism. I spent a lot of time on paleography and codicology, which are prerequisites for any serious work with primary sources.
During the PhD, I taught myself to code. The existing tools for textual criticism were often outdated, proprietary, or just didn’t fit the particular problems I was working on with catenae manuscripts. So I started building my own.
The Dissertation
My thesis, The Manuscripts of John of Damascus on Paul, investigated whether manuscripts GA 0150, GA 2110, and GA 1506 constitute a newly identified textual family in Rom 13–1 Cor 4. They do. The archetype dates to the Umayyad Caliphate (mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries) and traces back to the Mar Saba monastery in the Judean Desert. This places it at the desk of John of Damascus. The thesis argues that this family should be referenced in critical editions as the text of John of Damascus, rather than as individual witnesses.
More on the thesis →Harvard University
I’m now a Software Engineer in the Arts & Humanities Research Computing team at Harvard. The role is part consultant, part builder—I work with faculty to design and build virtual research environments for their projects.
What I Do
- Virtual Research Environments: Platforms for dispersed teams to collaborate on data entry and annotation of digitized materials.
- Data Visualization: Tools that let scholars see their data as maps, networks, or phylogenetic trees instead of spreadsheets.
- Consultation: Advising on the technical side of grant proposals.
- Architecture and Engineering: Full stack from CSS to cloud.