Rachel Mairs

Rachel Mairs
OccupationsClassicist, ancient historian
Academic background
EducationUniversity of Cambridge
Academic work
DisciplineClassics
Sub-disciplineMultilingualism and literacy
InstitutionsUniversity of Reading

Rachel Mairs is a classical scholar, ancient historian and linguist. She is a professor of Classics and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Reading. Her research focuses ancient multilingualism, with a focus on the interaction between Greeks and "non-Greeks" in Hellenistic Egypt and on Central Asia.[1]

Academic career

Rachel Mairs received her MPhil and PhD from the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Her 2006 PhD thesis, Ethnic Identity in the Hellenistic Far East, focused on Greeks in Bactria-Sogdiana, Arachosia and India, and became part of her monograph published by University of California Press in 2014.[2] Her other books on the ancient world include The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East: A Survey (2011) and The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World (2020).[3] She has also published an open-access book, Arabic Dialogues: Phrasebooks and the Learning of Colloquial Arabic, 1798-1945 (2024) with University College London Press.[4] She co-runs the academic blog Everyday Orientalism, which works to highlight the legacies of colonialism in papyrology and classics.[5]

Awards and recognition

Rachel Mairs was awarded a Mid-Career Fellowship by the British Academy in 2018.[6] She has also received funding from UKRI for her project IndigenousGuides under the Horizon Europe guarantee scheme.[7]

Bibliography

  • Doff, S., Iamartino, G., Mairs, R., eds. (2025) Women in the history of language learning and teaching: hidden pioneers of practice from Europe and beyond (1400-2000). Routledge, London. ISBN: 9789048558339
  • Bowman, A., Crowther, C., Hornblower, S., Mairs, R., Savvolpoulos, K., eds. (2025) Corpus of Ptolemaic inscriptions part I: Greek, bilingual, and trilingual inscriptions from Egypt volume 2 the Fayum and the Valley (Nos. 207-409). Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents, Oxford University Press, pp. 576. ISBN: 9780198860495

References

  1. ^ "Rachel Mairs". University of Reading. Retrieved 2025-02-24.
  2. ^ Mairs, Rachel, ed. (2014), "Acknowledgements", The Hellenistic Far East: archaeology, language and identity in Greek Central Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 9780520281271{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  3. ^ "Rachel Mairs". University of Reading. Retrieved 2025-02-24.
  4. ^ "Arabic Dialogues". Retrieved 2025-02-24.
  5. ^ "Everyday Orientalism". ISSN 2635-215X. Retrieved 2025-02-24.
  6. ^ "Mid-Career Fellowship awards". Retrieved 2025-02-24.
  7. ^ "IndigenousGuides - Writing Imperialism and Local Knowledge: Indigenous Guides in Greek and Roman Historiography". Retrieved 2025-02-24.