Rate My Professor Edward Armstrong

Dr Edward Armstrong is a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University, where he commenced a one-year appointment in July 2024. He teaches undergraduate courses in the Arts and Culture faculty, including Classical Mythology, Intermediate Ancient Greek, Advanced Ancient Greek, and Ancient Greece: History, Culture and Society. Armstrong obtained his PhD in Classics from the University of St Andrews in 2023, with the dissertation "Character and Rhetoric in Thucydides," supervised by Jon Hesk and Thomas Harrison. He previously completed a BA (Hons) and MPhil at the University of Sydney.

Armstrong's research focuses on Classical Greek literature, particularly Thucydides' History, examining characterisation through deliberative speeches, rhetoric of emotion, rhetorical modes, and intratextual parallels. His interests extend to the role of religious ritual and belief in alliances and treaties during the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars (431–404 BC), and sophistic concepts in Herodotus and Thucydides in relation to the Dissoi Logoi. After his PhD, he was Jacobi Scholar at the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. He holds a position as Non-Stipendiary Research Associate at the British School at Athens. Key outputs include his doctoral thesis and forthcoming publications: "Speaking of the Gods: Religious Belief in Thucydides" in Belief and Unbelief in the Ancient World (Eerdmans), and "Tragedies in Thucydides: A Cathartic Reading of Military Defeats" in Cathartic History (submitted). He is preparing monographs Character and Rhetoric in Thucydides and Cultures of Classical Greek Thought: Herodotus and Thucydides in Conversation with the Dissoi Logoi, plus articles on peace by libation and oath, and Herodotus' physical erga. Armstrong has presented the seminar "Ritual and Friendship in the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars" at ANU.