dr. S. (Saskia) Peels-Matthey

A CV can be found here.

Saskia Peels-Matthey is an assistant professor of Ancient Greek. She was trained at Leiden University and Utrecht University, where she obtained three MA degrees, in English, Classics, and Linguistics (2007, 2008, 2009), and a PhD in Classics / Ancient History (under the supervision of Josine Blok and Ineke Sluiter in Utrecht, 2014). She served as a Spinoza Fellow at Leiden University (2013) and held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge at the Université de Liège between 2014 and 2016. She then moved on to the field of business consulting, but returned to academia in 2017, when was appointed as an assistant professor of Ancient Greek at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

A one-minute research video can be found here.

Her research focuses on ancient Greek religion, through projects that transcend narrow disciplinary boundaries, combining cognitive, linguistic, and historical approaches. She is working on an NWO Veni project on Ancient Greek gods (called Polytheism as Language), and she is one of the main editors of the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms project. Saskia is also interested in studying the meaning of words, especially evaluative terms that have to do with the religious sphere. Saskia’s research is currently set in the context of Anchoring Innovation, a research program of the Netherlands National Research School in Classical Studies (OIKOS), which is supported by a 2017 Gravitation Grant of the Ministry of Education of the Netherlands (NWO). She is also a Board Member of this national research program. Saskia is interested in using digital humanities methods and computational linguistic tools to advance the study of Ancient Greek and Latin literature and epigraphy. Saskia is an active member of the Young Academy Groningen and collaborates closely with Groningen’s Pre-University Academy on a number of Public Engagement projects.