Dr Maxwell Stocker (MA Oxon, MSc, MA, PhD, AFHEA, CELTA)

Honorary Fellow in Classics

  • School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Contact details

Address

Street

School of History, Classics and Archaeology
William Robertson Wing
Old Medical School
Teviot Place

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9AG

Availability

  • Please contact by email.

Biography

Background

I read Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies with Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Oxford (University College; Griffith Institute), graduating in 2013. I attained the Cambridge-accredited CELTA qualification in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in 2013. I then completed a Taught MSc in Classics at the University of Edinburgh with a particular focus on comparative epic, graduating with Distinction in 2015. In 2016, I moved to Texas for two years, and completed a fully funded MA in Classics at Texas Tech University, graduating in 2018. From 2018 to 2023, I undertook a fully funded PhD in Classics at the University of St Andrews, co-supervised between St Andrews, the University of Glasgow, and Sapienza University of Rome. During my PhD, I undertook a fully funded Visiting Doctoral Researcher Fellowship in Classics and Egyptology at Sapienza University of Rome, during which time I was a reader at the American Academy in Rome. I held a research assistantship at Sapienza University of Rome from 2019 to 2021. I passed my viva with no corrections, and graduated in 2023.

I have worked as a freelance tutor in Classics, Egyptology, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies for many years. After working as a departmental tutor at St Andrews, I took up teaching positions at the University of Glasgow and the Classical Association of Scotland from 2023 to 2024, along with a postdoctoral appointment at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. From 2024 to 2025, I held the IASH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Classics at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. I was appointed as Honorary Fellow in Classics in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, in January 2026. 

I have received numerous awards, including fellowships and grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the European Commission, Sapienza University of Rome, the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, Texas Tech University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of St Andrews. I have held visiting appointments at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews. I have given a range of invited lectures at universities across Europe and North America. I have an extensive portfolio of international collaborative work, in particular with colleagues and institutions in Italian academia.

I have taught undergraduate (sub-honours and honours) and postgraduate modules on a wide range of topics in Classics, ancient history, archaeology, Egyptology, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. I have extensive experience of teaching language and literature courses in Greek, Latin, and Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian at all levels. I have specialised in the teaching of Greek, and have taught across the full range of genres in both prose and poetry. I have also taught a broad range of topics in Greek and Roman history, including the history of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Periods, Athenian democracy, the Persian Wars, Greek historiography, the history of the Roman Republic and the early Empire, and the Late Antique Mediterranean.

Qualifications

PhD in Classics, University of St Andrews (2018-2023)

MA in Classics, Texas Tech University (2016-2018)

Taught MSc in Classics (with Distinction), University of Edinburgh (2014-2015)

University of Cambridge CELTA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (2013)

MA (Oxon) Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies with Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Oxford (2010-2013)

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Responsibilities & affiliations

Full Member of the European Association of Archaeologists

Professional Member of the International Association of Egyptologists

Full Member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

Member of Advance Higher Education Connect

Committee Member and Webmaster, Current Research in Egyptology (2016-2018)

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

Areas of supervision: Egypto-Aegean and Graeco-Egyptian Studies, Greek interfaces with Egypt and the Near East, comparative approaches to the Greek world, the history of the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean, Archaic epic and lyric, Middle and Late Egyptian literature.

Research summary

I am a Classicist and Egyptologist with research interests focussing on the cultural history of the relationship between Egypt and the Greek world from the Early Mycenaean Period to the Classical Period. Moving beyond Hellenocentric reception-focussed approaches, my research agenda tackles the pivotal and long-neglected topic of the Egyptian cultural and literary influences on the Greek world over the long term of the second and first millennia BC. I am a specialist in Archaic Greek epic and lyric, Middle and Late Egyptian language and literature, and the history and cultures of Egypt, the Near East, and the Aegean, particularly during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.

Current research interests

My current book project will present the first comprehensive study of the Egyptian cultural and literary influences on Homeric epic. Within this overarching remit, the book presents a pioneering study of the as-yet unexplored cross-cultural relationship between the Odyssey and the Middle and Late Egyptian traditions of travel poetry. The book demonstrates that the Odyssey is saturated with Egyptian cultural and literary influences of various kinds, and that it was heavily influenced by second-millennium Egyptian travel poetry and royal narrative inscriptions. The book provides a revolutionary new reconstruction of the oral developmental history of the Odyssey, and offers a new and distinctive alternative to previous approaches in Classics and Egyptology to the study of comparative literature in the context of the ancient world. The book promises to transform our understanding of the oral prehistory of Greek epic, and of the nature and extent of Egypto-Aegean cultural interaction during the Late Bronze Age.

Past research interests

I have published on a wide array of topics, including Egyptian archaeology of the Late Bronze Age, the history of Egyptology, the history of the Bronze Age Aegean, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. I have also written outreach articles aimed at wider audiences. For example, my 2022 article gave a philological analysis of the tapestry of Minerva within the Arachne-Minerva weaving contest in Ovid's Metamorphoses, providing original insights into how the four punishment scenes on the tapestry relate to one another, why the poet chose them from the pre-existing mythopoetic repertoire, and how they are integrated into the episode as a whole. My 2023 article, coauthored with Alessandro Piccolo, solves two longstanding textual conundrums in Herodotus' ethnography of Egypt, both of which relate to Herodotus' engagement with Egyptian endonyms for the city of Thebes. The article demonstrates that Herodotus was familiar with two of the most common Egyptian endonyms for the city of Thebes, and that his familiarity is discernible in two particular passages of Book 2. In so doing, the article corrects two longstanding mistakes in the secondary literature relating to Herodotus' use of the toponyms "Neapolis" and "Thebes" in these passages.

Stocker, M.G. and Piccolo, A. (2023), 'Graeco-Egyptian Toponymy in Herodotus: The Herodotean Reception of the Egyptian Names of Thebes', Syllogos 2, 49-64.

Stocker, M.G. (2022), 'Review: Knodell, A.R. (2021), Societies in Transition in Early Greece: An Archaeological History, Oakland: University of California Press', Journal of Hellenic Studies 142, 427-429.

Stocker, M.G. (2021-2022), 'The Punishment Scenes on Minerva's Tapestry in Ovid's Metamorphoses (6.87-100): Allusion, Integration, and Metadiscourse', Incontri di Filologia Classica 21, 79-123.

Stocker, M.G. and Piccolo, A. (2021), 'Review: Forshaw, R. (2019), Egypt of the Saite Pharaohs, 664-525BC, Manchester: Manchester University Press', Classical Review 71:2, 447-449.

Stocker, M.G. (2020), 'Integration and Interaction in Egyptian Non-Royal Sacred Landscapes: A Study of the Tomb-Chapel of Neferhotep (TT50)', in G.F. Chiai and R. Haussler (eds.), Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity: Creation, Manipulation, Transformation, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 247-258.

Stocker, M.G. (2017), 'Identity and the Protagonist in Greek and Egyptian Narrative Poetry: The Construction of Cultural Identity in Homer's Odyssey and the Tale of Sinuhe', in J. Chyla, J. Debowska-Ludwin, and K. Rosinska-Balik (eds.), Current Research in Egyptology 2016: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 159-172.

Stocker, M.G. (2014-2015), 'The Aberdonian Egyptologists: The Lives and Legacies of James Grant and Robert Wilson', Ancient Egypt Magazine 15:3, 12-15.

Stocker, M.G. (2014), 'The Ancient Egyptian legal system: in life and in death', Ancient Egypt Magazine 14:5, 40-45.

Stocker, M.G. (2010), 'The Ancient Egyptian Cult of the Apis Bull', Ancient Egypt Magazine 10:4, 34-39.

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