Harry Kamperis
About:
Harry Kamperis is a PhD candidate in Classics. He specializes in Greco-Roman drama (especially comedy of the middle and late Republic), stylistics, and literary representations of trauma in the ancient world. His work blends philology, critical theory, and performance studies to examine how ancient texts negotiate questions of identity, desire, and social belonging. His dissertation focuses on Plautine palliata and challenges the longstanding view of Roman comedy as a genre that ultimately contains the disruption it stages and restores the established order. Through readings informed by queer theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, it examines how comic failures of identity, kinship, reproduction, and authority expose tensions within the normative structures the plays appear to reinforce.
Harry’s doctoral research has received support from the A. G. Leventis Foundation (2022–2025), the Foundation for Education and European Culture (2022–2026), and the University of California’s Regents Fellowship (2022–2023). He has taught Introductory Latin, as well as courses on Greek mythology and Humor and Laughter in the Ancient World. His teaching and broader research reflect a sustained commitment to pedagogy. His current work in this area examines how scaffolded writing and AI-aware pedagogy can help students engage critically and ethically with difficult material in ancient comedy, a project supported by UCSB’s Humanities & Social Sciences Research Grant (2026).
Prior to beginning his doctoral studies at UCSB, Harry received undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Classical Philology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (BA 2019; MA 2022). He also taught Greek and Latin as an Erasmus scholar in Cologne, Germany (2019), and worked as a research assistant at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (2018) and at Democritus University of Thrace (2021–2023).
Link to set up an online meeting: https://calendly.com/ckamperis-ucsb