Lucia is a PhD candidate in late antique and medieval history and is pursuing a certificate in Hellenic Studies. Her research focuses on relationships of dependence between peasants and landowners and on social networks among peasants on large estates across the Mediterranean. Her dissertation analyzes the socio-economic and legal relationships within estate communities in Egypt between the fifth and eighth centuries. Using papyrological as well as legal sources, she examines ways in which members of these communities used the law and their networks to navigate a world in which the odds were typically stacked against them. In addition to her work on Egypt, Lucia is broadly interested in the perception of ‘the law’ by ordinary people in the pre-modern era, legal pluralism, and social practices such as reciprocity and interdependence.

During the 2023-24 academic year, Lucia was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and at the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library as well as a Visiting PhD Student at the University of Vienna. Prior to starting her PhD, she studied Ancient History, Art History, and Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna and the University of Crete. Additionally, she completed internships in art museums in the US and in Europe as well as various tutoring and research jobs. Between 2018 and 2020, Lucia was employed at the Austrian National Library in a digitization project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation aimed at making papyri from the early Arab period accessible to a wider audience.

At Princeton, Lucia has been Assistant Instructor for two undergraduate classes, HIS 343: The Formation of the Christian West and HIS 227: The Worlds of the Middle Ages. During the 2024-25 academic year, she serves as a Community Associate with the Graduate School, and she has been co-organizer of various workshops and events, such as the 2024 Medieval Studies Graduate Conference, the Late Antique and Medieval Greek Reading Group (2024-25), the Comparative Diplomatics workshop (2023-25), and the Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine workshop (2022-23). Lucia’s work has been supported through awards and fellowships from the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity, and the Program in the Ancient World at Princeton University.

Photo credit: Markus Muellner