Dr Kelli Rudolph

Dr Kelli Rudolph studied Classics at Princeton, where she received her BA in 2002, and at Cambridge where she was awarded an MPhil in 2003. After a year at Columbia University, she returned to Cambridge where she completed a PhD on ancient atomism in 2009. 

Before joining the Classical and Archaeological Studies Department at the University of Kent, Kelli was an Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University and concurrently held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Oxford University.

Kelli has broad interests in the ancient intellectual tradition. She specialises in the study of ancient philosophy and science, especially issues related to ancient physics and epistemology and welcomes enquiries from students wishing to pursue research in these areas. 

Her research investigates the cultural and intellectual development of attitudes and theories about the senses. She is currently working on the development of Presocratic sensory theory, and its "afterlife" in the Hellenistic philosophy.  

Her work on ancient theories of perception inaugurated a broader interest in ancient sensory studies. Her contributions to the Senses in Antiquity Series (Routledge), explore the way ancient thinkers develop theoretical approaches to the senses, particularly those of sight and taste. Her recently published edited volume, Taste and the Ancient Senses (Routledge 2018), is the first of its kind to explore the ancient sense of taste. 

Kelli is a member of the Health, Wellbeing and the Senses research cluster. 

Kelli has extensive experience teaching ancient philosophy, Greek and Latin at all levels, and more general classics modules, with a special focus on Greek and Hellenistic literature and history.