Learning Latin language

Charis Jo (Guenevera) was the founder and first president (2017-18) of the Oxford Latinitas Project, and the director of its first two Septimanae Latinae. She is currently a DPhil candidate in Classics (Language and Literature) at Oriel College writing her doctoral thesis on dialectic in Latin Philosophy, specifically the Augustinian fragment ‘de dialectica.’ She has also taught Latin at Jesus College and is an intern at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, currently working on the word revirescere. Besides academics, she loves classical music, good arguments, running, and reading with friends.

Krasimir Ivanov comes from Bulgaria, where he studied at the National Classical Lyceum and later graduated in classical philology from Sofia University. For two years he attended the Accademia Vivarium Novum in Rome, where he became fluent in Latin. For the last three years, he has been participating in OL as a tutor, and he is currently teaching Active Latin classes at Jesus College, Oxford. His main interests are related to the Roman Republic, where he is looking for the reasons that ex pulcherruma atque optuma pessuma ac flagitiosissuma facta sit. He also loves agriculture, astronomy, and good tales, and enjoys studying ancient thought – from Homer and Cato to the monks of Mount Athos.

Cynthia Liu is a third year DPhil candidate at Jesus College writing her doctoral thesis on the role of mystery language and imagery in Greek and Roman poetry. Though she grew up with Ancient Greek and Latin, she only began speaking them when she joined the Oxford Latinitas Project in 2018 during her MSt at Brasenose College. Before coming to Oxford, Cynthia received her B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Baylor University in Classics and Linguistics. Along with reading and teaching Latin and Greek, she is passionate about music, dance, and food.

Born and educated in Germany, where he first became acquainted with Latin and Greek, Matthias fell in love with the Studia Humanitatis when he attended the Accademia Vivarium Novum in Frascati, Italy. He subsequently returned to Germany to study Latin, Greek, Italian, History, Philosophy and Education at the University of Munich, but discovered he had itchy feet, and so, like a latter-day Grand Tourist, he ‘left his country’s bounds and sweet felds’ to study at the University of Palermo, the University of Exeter and the Sorbonne Université in Paris and continues to seize every opportunity to study and work abroad. In 2023, Matthias graduated in Munich with a dissertation on Dante’s Divina Commedia, his favourite work ever written in the vernacular. Despite his affection for Dante, he is currently reading for his MSt in Latin and Greek languages and literature at the University of Oxford.

Though he loves the elegant Latin style of the Golden Age, and enjoys spamming people with endless emails and messages written in Ciceronian Latin, his greatest pleasure is reading humanist authors – especially Erasmus – to see how they adapted ancient morals to the issues of their time and transmitted the jewels of ancient literature to their pupils. Matthias started teaching Latin at the Summer Courses of the Accademia Vivarium Novum in 2019, taught twice at the Scholae Aestivae Bulgaricae and has been teaching Latin and Greek for Oxford Latinitas since 2022.

Alwaleed Alsaggaf was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and lived there until the age of 16 when he moved to London to pursue his studies. Having received his IB diploma in 2015, he went to Birkbeck, University of London to read philosophy, and graduated from there in 2019. After finishing his first year at Birkbeck, he went to study Latin and Greek at the Accademia Vivarium Novum in 2016-2017. Alwaleed is now an MA researcher in Ancient Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, where he also currently teaches a course entitled “Latin for Philosophers”. He previously worked as a teacher of Latin language and literature at Eton College for two years.

His main research interests are ancient philosophy and its reception in the Arabic and Latin world, as well as contemporary analytic philosophy. Alwaleed is also passionate about Latin composition and teaching philosophy in Latin.

Ayelet Wenger teaches the OLP introduction to spoken Latin and was the coordinator of Septimana Latina 2020. She spent two years studying classical rabbinic literature in Israel, received her B.A. in Classics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, and is now pursuing a postgraduate career in Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World. Her thesis analyzes Septuagintalisms in the Gospel of Luke. Ayelet loves backpacking and other forms of wandering, Derek Walcott, and frequentatives.

Finlay O’Duffin is an independent Latin tutor and scholar serving as a non-executive committee member of the society. In Trinity Term of the OLP’s first year (2018) he developed and taught a weekly Schola Rhetorica in Latin on the basis of ancient progymnasmata. In 2016 and 2017 he taught at Vivarium’s summer schools, for which he also developed a Palaestra dicendi curriculum for practical oratory. His studies were in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (B.A., Jesus College, Cambridge); the Western Literary Tradition (M.A., Leuven, 2013); Latin and Greek (Vivarium Novum, 2013-14); and Law (LLB, London College of Law, 2018).

Diana Pont Puig (Valencia, Spain) received a BS in Classics from Universitat de València and a MA in High School education with a focus on Greek and Latin teaching from the same University. Then, she devoted herself to learning and teaching Ancient Greek as a living language. Since 2019, she has combined working in public high schools in Spain with teaching for Polis, Cultura Clásica, and other institutions that provide active language teaching in Greek.
In her free time, she loves to read Greek quietly or perform traditional activities of her land, such as playing Pilota Valenciana or doing human pyramids, called Muixeranga.

Jason Webber is a researcher in ancient languages and literature, who became interested in spoken Latin (and subsequently ancient Greek) while studying Greek and Latin literature at Oxford. Jason now has extensive experience in teaching spoken Attic Greek at all levels from beginners to advanced, and is currently developing a new coursebook based on the Active Method.

Jason recently completed a doctoral degree in ancient Greek literature, on the topic of local traditions in early Greek epos, at Magdalen College, Oxford, England, and they are this year working on a new grammar of the Hesiodic poems (Theogony and Works and Days) at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.

Beth Parker is a student at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. Having studied Latin traditionally for seven years before discovering the Active Method at Oxford, she was quick to recognise the benefits and above all the huge amount of joy to be found in immersing oneself completely in ancient languages, which allows her to engage with ancient texts in a much more profound and enlightening way. Beth is passionate about linguistics, metre and ancient music; she leads music sessions at Oxford Latinitas with her lyre, and enjoys imitating the Ancient Greek method of musical composition. She is most likely to be found marvelling at the unparalleled beauty of Vergil’s Latin hexameters or lost in composing Latin poetry of her own – often simultaneously. In 2024 she received the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin verse composition. Beth is eager to share her love for the ancient world with anyone
and everyone.

Mark is currently a student at Pembroke College, Oxford, reading for a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Whilst studying Latin and Greek in the National Classical Lyceum in Bulgaria, Mark’s recently kindled passion for ancient languages led him to the Accademia Vivarium Novum, where he learned to experience Latin and Greek at an entirely different level by speaking them, which enabled him to comprehend ancient texts much more profoundly. His current interests involve the development of epic poetry, comparative Semitic linguistics, the reception of the Greco-Roman and the ancient Near Eastern worlds in the Arabo-Islamic cultural milieu and, in the realm of hobbies, playing the guitar. He believes that ancient texts should be studied so that their wisdom be reflected on and applied to solving current problems. Through them, he thinks, we can understand how people of different cultures and philosophical traditions have more in common than might be initially perceived.

Nicholas Romanos is a student of Classics and Sanskrit at Worcester College, University of Oxford. In 2023 he was awarded the highest mark in his year for Classics Mods, and also received the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin prose composition. Besides the literature of the ancients, among whom he naturally reveres Homer most of all, he has a particular interest in philosophy (especially Nietzsche and Wittgenstein) and comparative philology. The active method has led him to a deeper and more intuitive understanding of Latin and Greek texts, and he is delighted to have the opportunity to share this with others.