Lucy Nicholas

Bio

Dr Lucy Rachel Nicholas is Lecturer in Latin and Greek Language and Culture. She is particularly interested in classical reception and projects which bridge the fields of Neo-Latin/Greek, the Renaissance and Reformation, and biblical scholarship. Her doctoral thesis centred on the Latin writings of the English humanist and Cambridge classical scholar, Roger Ascham. Following the publication of Roger Ascham’s ‘A Defence of the Lord’s Supper’: Latin Text and English Translation (Brill, 2017), also available in print is her translation and edition of Ascham’s Themata Theologica (Bloomsbury, 2024) and a co-edited volume of essays on Ascham (Roger Ascham and his Sixteenth-Century World, Brill, 2020). She is a keen promoter of the teaching of Neo-Latin, and has co-edited three Neo-Latin anthologies on (i) Britain, (ii) Europe, and (iii) British Universities (all with Bloomsbury). She has contributed to volumes on early modern disputations, Baroque Latinity, Thomas More, and published various articles on Neo-Greek. The Latin works of the Protestant circle at Cambridge University, including the verse and prose of Walter Haddon, represent the focus of her current research. She is the Latin Editor for the Thomas Nashe project, Vice-President of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies and on the Advisory Board of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.

Teaching

Lucy teaches the following courses, which when available to be booked can be found on our Research Training and Courses page: 

• Medieval and Renaissance Latin
• Classical Greek
• New-Ancient Greek

She also teaches the Warburg's MA Term 2 module, 'Classical Renaissance: Greco-Roman Rediscovery, Reception and Resurrection'.

MA/PHD Supervision

Lucy supervises students in projects that centre on classical reception, the classical tradition, Neo-Latin and Neo-Greek. 

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Lucy R. Nicholas, ‘Humanism and Reform in Sixteenth Century England re-examined through the Latin Works of Walter Haddon and his Circle’ in Brill Research Perspectives in Latinity and Classical Reception in the Early Modern Period (Brill, forthcoming).

Micha Lazarus and Lucy R. Nicholas, eds. Classical Reformations: Beyond Christian Humanism (Brepols, forthcoming).

Lucy R. Nicholas, Roger Ascham's Themata Theologica (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Gesine Manuwald and Lucy R. Nicholas, eds., An Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature in British Universities, (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Lucy R. Nicholas and Ceri Law, eds., Roger Ascham and his Sixteenth-Century World (Brill, 2020)

Daniel Hadas, Gesine Manuwald and Lucy R. Nicholas, eds., An Anthology of European Neo-Latin Literature (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Luke B. Houghton, Gesine Manuwald and Lucy R. Nicholas, eds., An Anthology of British Neo-Latin Literature (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Svorad Zavarský, Lucy R. Nicholas, and Andrea Riedl, eds.,Themes of Polemical Theology Across Early Modern Literary Genres (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016)

Lucy R. Nicholas, Roger Ascham’s ‘A Defence of the Lord’s Supper’: Latin Text and English Translation (Brill, 2017)

Essays / Chapters

‘Hellenomania and the sixteenth-century Anglo-German axis’, Helleno(ger)mania Conference Proceedings (Wuppertal University, forthcoming)

‘Classical Culture and Thomas Nashe’ in Andrew Hadfield, Jennifer Richards and Kate de Rycker, eds., Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe (OUP, in progress)

‘ad fontes et ad futurum: a survey of the Utopias in Latin’, in Cathy Shrank and Phil Withington, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More’s Utopia (OUP, 2024)

‘The sixteenth century’s revolution in rhetoric and its impact on the Baroque’, in Jacqueline Glomski, Gesine Manuwald and Andrew Taylor, eds., Baroque Latinity (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2023).

‘New perspectives on Cambridge’s role in the religious Reformation: Roger Ascham and the early Edwardian religious debates at the University’ in John F. McDiarmid and Susan Wabuda, eds., The Cambridge Connection in Tudor England: Humanism, Reform, Rhetoric, Politics (Brill, 2021)

‘In Search of the Truth: Mid-Sixteenth Century Disputations on the Eucharist in England’ in Robert Seidel ed., Early Modern Disputations and Dissertations in an Interdisciplinary and European Context (Brill, 2020), 105-44

‘Roger Ascham: a biographical appendix’ in Lucy R. Nicholas and Ceri Law eds., Roger Ascham and his Sixteenth Century World (Brill, 2020), 269-96

‘The Special Relationship: Ascham and Sturm, England and Strasbourg’ in Lucy R. Nicholas and Ceri Law eds., Roger Ascham and his Sixteenth Century World (Brill, 2020), 145-63

‘Exploring Polemical Theology in Humanism through a little-known tract on the Eucharist by the Tudor humanist, Roger Ascham’ in Svorad Zavarský, Lucy R. Nicholas and Andrea Riedl, eds., Themes of Polemical Theology Across Early Modern Literary Genres (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 67-84

‘Sin and Salvation in Roger Ascham’s Apologia pro Caena Dominica’ in Jonathan Willis ed., Sin and Salvation in Reformation England (Ashgate, 2015), 87-99

Journal Articles

‘Roger Ascham’s Latin–Greek Code-Switching: A Philosophical Phenomenon’, Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures, issue 9 (2024)

‘ “Amid the tears we sing”: Virgil and Humanity’, The Proceedings of the Virgil Society, vol. 30, 2020, 101-21

‘Roger Ascham’s Defence of the Lord’s Supper’, Reformation, vol. 20, 2015, 26-61

Encyclopedia Entries

Margaret Ascham, Wife and 'Literary Agent' of Roger Ascham, Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women's Writing