Dr Dawn LaValle Norman

Dr LaValle Norman’s research centres on the Greek literature of the Roman Empire during the transitional period from the first to the fourth centuries CE, looking especially at the conversation between Christian and non-Christian literary texts during this period. Much of her work focuses on the history of the philosophical dialogue. She has been a Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University since 2017 after a Junior Research Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford (2015-17), and a PhD in Classics at Princeton (2015).

Her first book presented a new reading of the fascinating Symposium of Methodius of Olympus, a third-century CE Christian rewriting of Plato’s work that made radical changes in gender, topic and aesthetic from the Platonic original.

Her current project, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) The Female Voice in Ancient Philosophical Dialogues, analyses the role that women play in philosophical dialogues from Plato to Augustine, tracking when women are allowed to speak and upon which topics they are deemed experts in the ancient and late ancient worlds. Her argument is that by following the role of women in these works, you can also follow the rise and fall of certain topics gendered feminine. Some of the work of this project was published as the Cambridge Element Early Christian Women in 2022 for the ‘Women in the History of Philosophy’ series. During her Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, Dr LaValle Norman will be working on the central monograph for this project.

She also researches the role that Aristotle plays in the later development of the dialogic tradition in both Greek and Latin. As part of this project, she is looking at Boethius’ First Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, a neglected early work of Boethius and his only philosophical dialogue besides The Consolation of Philosophy.

Dr LaValle Norman will be joined during her Visiting Fellowship by her husband, Dr Jack Norman, who is writing a book on the reception of Aquinas in modern theology and philosophy, especially by a group of thinkers called the Grammatical Thomists.