About
Hamish began his study of the ancient world in Christchurch, continued it in Los Angeles, road-tripped with it to Maine via the Midwest, and has now returned with it to
Wellington. Thematically, he studies movement, borderlands, networks, geography and imperialism. Geographically, he explores the Eastern Mediterranean, Southwest Asia/the Near East and Rome. Chronologically, he investigates the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Philologically, he enjoys cultural allusions and tricola. No, tetracola… Wait, I’ll come in again…
Hamish received his PhD in Classics from the University of Southern California in 2014 where he wrote a dissertation examining the representation of “Mesopotamia” as a borderland in Imperial Roman geographic writing of the first four centuries CE. His monograph on the subject is published:
Making Mesopotamia: Geography and Empire in a Romano-Iranian Borderland (Brill 2019). He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science and Technology (2011) from the USC Spatial Sciences Institute and received his MA from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand in 2006 with a thesis on the arrival of Roman power in Cilicia. He has published on mobility and representations of the Near east in Roman geographical writing, trade routes in Southwest Asia, analog game reception and design in the classroom, and cyberpunk in tabletop role playing games.
Hamish has taught classes in History and Classical Languages dealing with topics from the Bronze Age to the Information Age. He is interested in the applied pedagogical methodologies of digital humanities, especially digital geography and gaming, the reception of ideas about the ancient world in modern games, and the pedagogy of tabletop games. He also designs boardgames and roleplaying games.
