Tom Francis
PhD candidate · UCLA Department of Classics
I am a PhD Candidate in Classics at UCLA with a graduate certificate in Indo-European Studies. My dissertation involves the creation of a new and interdisciplinary dataset tracking archaeological, epigraphic, linguistic, and historical features across inscriptions in 1st millennium BCE Italy. This dataset is employed in a variety of computational analyses (especially network analyses) to study the extant inscriptional record in ancient Italy. These analyses reevaluate observable interactions between sites and groups as seen in the spread of material, epigraphic, and linguistic practices throughout ancient Italy and provide new insights into diffusion and community interactions in 1st millennium BCE Italy. In addition to these primary research interests, I have also presented on Greco-Roman medicine, Imperial Greek and Latin literature, and Koine Greek.
Select Presentations
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Teaching Late Antiquity (Quickly!): English Etymology Courses
'Late Antique Encounters' Conference, Ghent (Belgium), February -
Modeling Alphabet Diffusion and Community Interactions in Ancient Italy with Spatiotemporal Point Processes
with Muhammad Rehan. The Connected Past 2026, Toronto (Canada), September 23 -
Alphabets and Language Erasure: The Continuation of Roman Conquest in Modern Editions of Italic Languages
Society of Classical Studies 2026, San Francisco (CA), January 8 -
All Roads Lead to Veii: Using Networks to Contextualize Etruscan Inscriptions in Anagnia
The Connected Past 2025, Coimbra (Portugal), September 19
Office:
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