Mr David Douglas

BA (McGill), MA (Victoria)

Research Fellow

Biography

I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and studied Classics at McGill University (BA) and the University of Victoria (MA) before pursuing a PhD in Historical and Philological Sciences at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I have held research-related scholarships at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the École Française de Rome, and the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples.

Research

My postgraduate research has focused primarily on the Epicurean school of Greek philosophy, first in the context of Epicurean influence on classical Latin literature (mainly Virgil) and more recently as part of the ongoing study of the Herculaneum papyri. This collection of exceptionally well–preserved ancient scrolls is today housed at the National Library of Naples and constitutes a key documentary corpus for our knowledge of the history of Epicurean philosophy. The project behind my doctoral thesis was to understand the relationship between textual authority and sectarianism in the Epicurean school during the second and first centuries BC, concentrating in particular on the importance of canonical texts and their interpretation, and on the relationship between oral teaching and writing. At Emmanuel, I will be changing gears slightly in order to produce a critical edition of the Greek text of Philodemus of Gadara's epistemological treatise On Sensations, large fragments of which are preserved by a handful of papyri in the Herculaneum collection.