You are here:

Professor Melissa Lane

Visiting Fellow

(Princeton University)

1 January 2025 - 30 June 2025

Email Prof. Lane

(Photo credit: Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy)

Profile

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics and Associated Faculty in Classics and in Philosophy at Princeton University; she also holds the concurrent position of Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London. At the ICS, Lane will be working on a book manuscript exploring the figure of the lawgiver in classical and post-classical Greek thought, from Zaleucus and Charondas to Lycurgus and Solon and indeed to Moses (in Philo and Josephus), and the way in which “the lawgiver” featured as a trope in rhetorical, historical, and philosophical reflection. Topics will include the nature of law; the relationship between the roles of arbitrator and lawgiver; the role of writing; lawgiving, education, and habituation; purpose and goodness (revisiting the nomos / phusis debate in the context of the lawgiver), and comparative lawgiving (considering ancient Greek authors on lawgivers in the ancient Near East).