Simone Agrimonti, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Department of Classics, has received a Graduate Student Government Research Fellowship for interdisciplinary research. The award supports his dissertation project, “Interstate Arbitrations in Hellenistic Messenia.” This study examines a specific type of diplomatic interaction between Greek city-states and sheds new light on their use. Third-party arbitrations were not only an instrument of peace-keeping among the litigious city-states. Through them, ancient Greeks made powerful ideological statements about their communities and their political and cultural identity. Simone’s dissertation is the first scholarly project to focus on the traditionally-overlooked ideological aspects of these documents. This award will support his research by allowing him to travel to Greece during the summer of 2020. There he will visit several museums, archaeological sites, and mountainous areas (Messene, Olympia, Taygetos), to examine in person Greek legal documents inscribed on stone.
This year, the Graduate Student Government Research Fellowship is also funding another UC Classics dissertation project by Valia Tsikritea.