Classical Greece

Sanjaya Thakur is professor and chair of classics at Colorado College and has held a number of national leadership positions in the field of classical studies. He  served as the director of the Classical Summer School at the American Academy in Rome from 2021 to 2023 and was the Elizabeth A. Whitehead Scholar at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 2022 to 2023. Sanjaya has published numerous articles, primarily on the literature and history of the age of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. He teaches a wide range of courses on Greek and Roman history, Latin literature, ancient athletics, and Greek and Roman art and archaeology. He also co-directed and organized an Associated Colleges of the Midwest faculty seminar entitled Mediterranean Trivium that was based in Italy.

Sanjaya earned two master's degrees in classical studies and classical art and archaeology as well as a PhD from the University of Michigan. An avid traveler, he has led many study tours through Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Dr. Nikos Tsivikis is a field archaeologist and researcher at the Foundation for Research and Technology–Hellas (FORTH), the largest high-impact research institute in Greece. Nikos has always been fascinated by the societies of the past and how they shared a common home in the wider Eastern Mediterranean basin. He pursued this passion at the University of Crete, where he specialized in Byzantine archaeology and material culture. Since then, Nikos has led excavations and conducted research at major archaeological sites such as Amorium in Turkey and Messene in the Peloponnese, examining how everyday objects reflect social customs and cultural exchange across Europe and the Middle East.

Nikos has received fellowships at prestigious institutions such as Dumbarton Oaks and the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University in Washington, D.C.; the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He publishes widely in both English and the languages of the region he studies, focusing on how cities and urban settlements change over time. When not excavating, he remains passionate about antiquity and the ways in which we look to our past in search of understanding of the present.

Dr. Victoria Whitworth grew up in Kenya, where she developed a passion for the deep past and the natural world. At the universities of Oxford and York, she studied medieval literature, art, and archaeology; and in between degrees she worked and traveled in Greece and qualified as a Blue Badge Guide with the London Tourist Board. Her doctorate was on the origin of medieval Christian ideas of landscape, burial, and commemoration. In parallel, she has explored the Viking Age in three historical thrillers, The Bone Thief, The Traitors’ Pit, and The Daughter of the Wolf. Victoria worked for a decade on the remote Scottish archipelago of Orkney and has written a best-selling memoir about her time in the islands, Swimming with Seals. Her new book about Greece, Dust and Pomegranates, was published in October 2024, and her major study of the world’s most famous medieval manuscript, the Book of Kells, appeared in 2025.

Paolo Squatriti is professor of history and Italian at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also teaches in the university’s Program in the Environment. Though he was born and grew up in Rome, Paolo studied history at Boston College and received a PhD in medieval European history from the University of Virginia. While he has lived and taught in a variety of places, he currently spends most of his time in Ann Arbor, teaching and researching medieval and environmental history. He has produced numerous articles, translations, and books; the paperback version of his most recent book, Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Nature and Culture in Carolingian Europe, AD 750-900, was released in 2024. Over the past half-century, Paolo has crisscrossed the Mediterranean region on foot, by plane, and by other forms of transport, and he looks forward to sharing his unique insights on the area’s history and natural heritage.

Veronica Kalas is an art historian and archaeologist with special expertise in the ancient through medieval periods of the Mediterranean world, including southern Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, and Tunisia. She earned her MA and PhD in art history and archaeology from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and her BA in classical archaeology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her doctoral research focused on the art, architecture, and society of Byzantine Cappadocia, a volcanic region located in central Turkey about which she has published extensively.

Veronica’s work has been supported by the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, and Dumbarton Oaks Research Libraries and Collections in Washington, D.C. She has taught courses on a variety of topics—including early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval art; ancient Greek and Roman art; and architectural history—at the University of Michigan, Albion College, Wayne State University, and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She is very interested in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches to the history of art and archaeology. She has collaborated with museums on blockbuster exhibitions and currently teaches traveling study abroad courses. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge with the general public by working on educational programs for the History Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, and TED-Ed, and by lecturing widely in the Mediterranean region on cultural heritage and archaeological study tours.

Dr. Andrew Becker was born in Burma (Myanmar), spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and has continued to travel ever since—mostly Europe and Asia.  He has been lecturing in Italy since 1997, first as a professor teaching students abroad, then since 2015 with Smithsonian Journeys.  Andy is an associate professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech (with stints teaching in Switzerland and London), and has won numerous local and national awards for teaching. He earned a BA from the University of Michigan, a master’s from Cambridge University, and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Andy’s scholarly specialties are ancient: specifically the cultures, literatures, and languages of Ancient Rome and Greece, as well as the constant, recurring re-engagement of many later civilizations with Ancient Rome and Greece.

Stephen Clancy is an art and architectural historian with expertise in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art and architecture. He recently retired as professor of art history at Ithaca College in New York, where he taught for 27 years. He received his PhD from Cornell University, and his research career began with a focus on 15th-century French and Flemish illuminated manuscripts, for which he received a Fulbright scholarship in Brussels, Belgium. Stephen also received grants from the Hewlett and Keck foundations to investigate how technology can open up new avenues for understanding the architecture of the distant past. This culminated in his work with a team from the University of Melbourne in Australia on an interactive tool entitled “Virtual Chartres Cathedral.” As a visiting fellow at the Australia National University in Canberra, he focused on interactions between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Mediterranean basin during the Middle Ages.

The academic pursuit he has enjoyed above all others is teaching and sharing his knowledge of art and architecture. A popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, he has led more than 20 tours and cruises through the Mediterranean region and northern Europe.