Christopher Ell

I am a cultural historian whose research and teaching interests center on the history, literature, and material culture of Greece and Rome within their broader Mediterranean and Near Eastern contexts. My current research examines dining and drinking cultures in the interconnected world of the Mediterranean and Near East, ca. 800-450 BCE, exploring the close relationship between social organization and dining and drinking practice. I employ a comparative framework to consider how the entangled peoples of the Mediterranean and Near East constructed social distinction and cultural identity through their dining and drinking practices. With a more specific focus on the cultural worlds of the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid empires and the Greek, Etruscan, and Phoenician city-states (and their multiethnic colonial settlements), my research examines the role of food culture in constructing cultural and ethnic identity. I pay close attention to the cross-cultural transfer of dining practices and implements, eschewing explanations of acculturation in favor of a framework of globalization within which local communities adapt the foreign to fit their own needs and traditions. My interdisciplinary research relies on textual, material, and iconographic evidence. Methodologically, I stress the cultural and chronological specificity of this evidence; because consumption practices change over time and exhibit local variations, I am wary of amalgamating evidence from disparate contexts into monoliths that give misleading impressions of uniformity.

I completed my B.S. in Physics and Classics at Yale in 2012 and worked as an IT consultant before joining Brown’s Ancient History program, where I received my PhD in 2023. I have taught courses in Greek and Roman history and culture, as well as Latin and ancient Greek. When not teaching about the ancient world or researching ancient food cultures, I can be found working my beloved grill, enjoying long walks, or spending time with my two cats (questionable research assistants but excellent Netflix companions).