A Digital Humanities initiative that hosts free, open-access resources for teaching and learning about real people in the ancient world and the people who study them.
Chelsea A.M. Gardner
Chelsea A.M. Gardner is an Associate Professor of Ancient History at Acadia University. She earned her PhD in Classics with a specialization in Classical Archaeology at the University of British Columbia. She has worked on archaeological projects in Canada, Bulgaria, Greece, and Iraqi Kurdistan and is currently the co-director of the CARTography Project and the new Southern Mani Archaeological Project. Her research focuses primarily on the history, archaeology, and identity of the inhabitants of the ancient Mani peninsula in Lakonia, Greece, and her work has appeared in Hesperia, thersites, Mouseion, the Journal of Greek Archaeology, ZPE, and the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. She is currently working on two book projects: Journey to the End of the World: Tainaron in Classical Antiquity, and Following in the Footsteps of the Leigh Fermors. She is also active in the fields of Digital Humanities and Pedagogy, with publications appearing in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Journal for Interactive Teaching and Pedagogy, and the Debates in the Digital Humanities series. When she isn’t podcasting, she runs the Women in Antiquity project and is a Wikipedia Scholar. She has also appeared in documentary series’ for PBS and National Geographic, and has been featured in Nature magazine for her work with stray dogs in Greece.
Christine L. Johnston
Christine Johnston is an Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean History at Western Washington University, and a Natural Environment Area Editor for the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. She earned her Ph.D. from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a focus on the Archaeology of Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, and the Near East. She currently works with the Kissonerga-Skalia field project in Western Cyprus, but has also excavated in Israel and Turkey, as well as Vancouver, Canada. Her research centres on the cultures and history of the Ancient Mediterranean world, particularly on economic exchange and cross-cultural interaction. She employs historical, anthropological, and network methodology to examine political economy and exchange systems in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly the roles of non-institutional actors and extra-palatial trade networks. Current research articles in preparation examine changes in production communities during periods of sociopolitical change in Western Cyprus, and analyze the relationship between political and economic institutions and the distribution of imported goods in both Cyprus and Egypt. In addition to the study of political economy, she is active in research on environmental and climate change in Ancient Egypt with colleagues from the University of British Columbia, and co-edited a recent volume on Ancient Egypt and the Environment. She also engages in research on cultural heritage protection and the pedagogical value of integrating legacy material collections in the classroom, and is working on a project with graduate students that explores strategies of increasing classroom accessibility through the incorporation of 3D printed objects. Since 2017 she has been a volunteer instructor at the North Shore ElderCollege, running short courses each spring on different cultures of the ancient world for retired learners.
Melissa Funke
Melissa Funke is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Winnipeg and a member of the Ancient Love Letters research network at the University of Leeds. She completed her PhD at the University of Washington with a dissertation on gender in the fragmentary plays of Euripides. Her work focuses on dramatic performance (ancient and modern) as well as gender and status in classical antiquity, particularly as it is depicted in literature; it has appeared in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies along with several collected volumes. Her current project is a biography of the (in)famous Greek courtesan Phryne that examines the role of anecdote in fashioning literary-historical narratives. She also directs the Lux Project at the University of Winnipeg, which is an outreach project based on a collection of Roman-Egyptian artefacts that aims to make them accessible to both the local community and scholars around the world.
Sabrina C. Higgins
Sabrina C. Higgins is an Associate Professor cross-appointed between the Departments of Global Humanities and Archaeology, and the Director of the Stavros Niarchos Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. She completed her Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, with a focus on the material evidence for the cult of the Virgin Mary in Late Antique Egypt, a project she is currently transforming into her first monograph. She is also an active field archaeologist, currently serving as the Assistant Director of the excavations of a late antique church at Golemo Gradište in North Macedonia. In addition to this project, she has excavated at various sites in Egypt, Bulgaria and Greece. As an archaeologist and art historian, moreover, her work is inherently multidisciplinary, intersecting the fields of Late Antique Studies, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art History, Papyrology, and Gender Studies, and her work has appeared in various journals, including the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Eastern Christian Art, Egyptian Archaeology, the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Enchoria, and the Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies, among others. She is also a recent recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project ‘The Early Cult of the Virgin and the Hegemony of the Text’, which interrogates the material evidence for the early cult of the Virgin across the entire Eastern Mediterranean Basin. More broadly, she is also interested in the ways in which art and space interact within Late-Antique Christianity religious structures and the manner in which art is used by socially-marginalized populations to exert agency.
Victoria Austen
Victoria Austen is Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD in Classics from King’s College London in 2020 and her monograph, ‘Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden’, was published in March 2023 as part of Bloomsbury’s ‘Ancient Environments’ Series. Alongside her research, she is a Wikipedia scholar and contributor to the Women’s Classical Committee #WCCWiki project; and her use of Wikipedia in the classroom has been featured on the WikiEducation blog and in the Winnipeg Free Press. She has also appeared as a guest on the podcasts The Partial Historians, Let’s Talk About Myth’s Baby, The Endless Knot, and When in Rome.
Project Staff
Content Development
Eleonora Mylli is a graduate student in Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the Peopling the Past team in September 2025 as research assistant. She is working on calendar planning and content developing, focusing on linking historical, cultural, and thematic events with relevant research and identifying opportunities for new material.
Aikaterini (Katia) Markaki is a graduate student in Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a research assistant for Peopling the Past from December 2024 until May 2025, working on content development and calendar planning.
Megan Ward is a current honors undergraduate student in Anthropology and History at Western Washington University and research assistant for Peopling the Past, working on content development and calendar planning. Megan joined the project in January 2024 as part of the production team on Season 4 of the podcast, focused on cultural heritage and the ethics of collecting and display practices.
Podcast Editors
Britt Bauer is a Winnipeg-based PhD candidate with the University of Bristol who is working on a dissertation concerning the edible wild plants of Roman Italy. They have been working periodically with Peopling the Past since 2021; first as a blog publisher, and now as an audio editor.
Lauren Millett graduated from Acadia University with a degree in History. She was employed as a contact editor for Season 2 and Part of Season 3 of the Peopling the Past Podcast.
Cassandra Palmer graduated from Acadia University with a degree in Music Therapy. During her undergraduate degree, she worked for the Peopling the Past Project as our podcast sound editor for Season 2 and parts of Season 3.
Abbey Raynes is a recent graduate of the history program at Western Washington University and was a research assistant for Peopling the Past in 2024. Abbey joined the project as part of the production team on Season 4 of the podcast, focused on cultural heritage and the ethics of collecting and display practices, and contributed to both audio editing and content development.
Awards and Honours
2023. SCS Outreach Prize, Society for Classical Studies.
2022. Knowledge Mobilization Grant, University of Winnipeg.
2022. Elaine Fantham Award, The Classical Association of Canada.
2021. Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities Grant, Society for Classical Studies.
2021. Public Scholarship Award, Women’s Classical Caucus.
2021. Open Educational Resource Grant, University of British Columbia.
2021. Honourable Mention, Emerging Open Scholarship Award, Canadian Social Knowledge Institute.
2020. Classics Everywhere Grant, Society for Classical Studies.
2020. Acadia University Research Fund.
Peopling the Past is an Incorporated Society under the British Columbia Societies Act, operating under the name Peopling the Past Educational Society (#S0079208).
Peopling the Past 