Jason Pedicone, the co-founder and President of the Paideia Institute, received his Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University in 2013. Jason has taught courses in Latin, Greek, and the history of Classical Scholarship at the university level in the U.S. and Western Europe, and is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College and Fordham University. Jason’s research and public speaking focus on public humanities and Latin and Greek pedagogy. Jason received a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Germany in 2004, and a Jacob Javits Fellowship in 2013 to support his graduate work. In 2015, together with Paideia's co-founder, Eric Hewett, Jason was awarded the President’s Award by the Society for Classical Studies for outstanding achievements in promoting the study of Classics. He lives in Manhattan.
Claire Cunningham is the Managing Editor of In Medias Res. She has a degree in Art History from UC Berkeley, and her love of Greek statuary is what brought her to Paideia's door back in 2013, when she worked as an intern writing forLoci in Locis. She then continued with Paideia for several years directing its European programming, eventually leaving to finish her MA in English Literature at the Università Ca' Foscari. When she is not helping manageIn Medias Resor assisting with other publications, she can be found working on her own independent writing projects.
Ilias Kolokouris is a Ph.D. student in Classics at the University of Athens and New College, Oxford. He holds a ptychion in Ancient Greek and Latin Literature, and a Master's Degree in teaching Modern Greek as a foreign language. His thesis was on the tragic elements found in Aristophanes’ Acharnians. Master's thesis on Politeness Strategies and Gender in Refusals to Invitation - how to teach refusals to learners of modern greek. Ilias has taught for the University of Missouri Creative Writing Seminars on Serifos, for the Modern Greek Language Centre of the University of Athens and for Paideia’s Living Greek in Greece program. He also teaches at the Living Greek in Greece Highschool Program. His current research focuses on the reception of ancient Greek literature within modern greek Aestheticism prose and British Decadence in Oxford. Translation of "Women of Homer" by Oscar Wilde into modern Greek, will be published by Kastaniotis Publications in 2020. "Modern Greek For Classicists" from Paideia Press in 2020.
Cecilegraduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with an AB in Classical Studies. Her interests include Roman archaeology and art history, and she hopes to work as a museum educator in the future. She is an alumna of 2017 Living Latin in Rome program.
Madison is a Latin teacher at the School of the Blessed Sacrament in Manhattan, teaching 4th-8th grade. Using the spoke-Latin approach, she teaches Paideia’s Elementa curriculum and is now piloting the second edition of Elementa. She is also an English PhD student at Fordham University, in which she focuses on Greek and Latin pedagogy in 16th-century England. She is an alumna of LLiR 2017, the Rome Internship 2018, and has been a Telepaideia instructor.
Margot Kleinman is a sophomore at Columbia University, majoring in Economics and Classical Studies. She is a lover of latin and has been studying for years. She previously attended Paideia's living Latin in Rome high school, has worked on Aequora and developing the Elementa curriculum, and has interned with Paideia in Rome.
John Byron Kuhner is the former president of the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies (SALVI) and editor of the Paideia Institute's online magazine, In Medias Res.
Griffin is a graduate of Cornell University with a B.A. in Latin and the College Scholar Program, and wrote a thesis for the latter on the Old Saxon Heliand poem, a 6,000 line alliterative verse epic retelling of the New Testament. He additionally received minors in German, religious studies, and medieval studies, and some of his scholarly passions include Greek and Latin Patristics, Biblical Hebrew, and Anglo-Saxon England. During his time as a student, he helped run Cornell’s undergraduate society for medieval scholarship, played in performances of Ancient Greek tragedy, and participated in reading groups in Latin and Old Norse. He is an alumnus of the 2017 Living Greek in Greece program.
Jonathan Meyer holds degrees from Calvin College, Yale University, and the University of Kentucky, where he took part in the active Latin program at the Institute for Latin Studies. He is primarily interested in Latin of the Renaissance to the modern period. He was a regular member at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, and a fellow at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck, Austria. He also studied under Reginald Foster. Since 2014 he has been an instructor for Living Latin in Rome and has taught occasional courses for Telepaideia. He is currently the primary instructor for Paideia's Rome fellowship.
Chikondi Medson teaches classics at the University of Malawi. Originally from a rural village in Malawi, Chikondi is an alumnus of the Accademia Vivarium Novum. While in Rome, he attended undergraduate courses at the Università Pontificia Salesiana, where he graduated from in June, 2016, defending his dissertation entitled "Senecae Locus In Philosophia Stoica: De Hominis Libertate Fato Universa Regente." His interests include Seneca's Stoicism, Patristic literature and Lucian.
A native of Rome, Marco Romani Mistretta studied Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and received a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University before joining the Paideia Institute. He currently directs the Institute's European branch and oversees all financial reporting, including income statements, balance sheets, and annual budgets. He also manages the Paideia Press. Besides being the author of several research publications, he has taught a number of courses on ancient languages, Greek and Roman literatures, and science in antiquity. He peer-reviews articles for Sage Business Cases and regularly lectures at Rome's Sapienza University.
Nancy Vander Veer is the Programs Manager at the Paideia Institute. She previously taught Latin at the Marymount School of New York and is a graduate of Samford University.
Before Luca became the bookkeeper for the Italian branch of the Paideia Institute, he graduated with a degree in Business Studies and Foreign Languages (English, French and Spanish) in Rome. He held several jobs (sales assistant, warehouseman, secretary) before working in a tax service center and then at an accounting firm. In his free time he loves to go to the cinema, travel, take photos and, when the weather is nice, do some trekking.
After almost a decade of teaching languages, Jamel left the classroom to focus on writing curriculum. Jamel developed materials for the Aequora program, served as a subject matter expert for the Institute's Summer Humanities Internship in 2017, and joined as a full time curriculum designer for 2018. She holds degrees in Classics and Letters from the University of Oklahoma and is pursuing a M.A. in Educational Technology Leadership from George Washington University. Outside classics and linguistics, Jamel is particularly interested in Irish archaeology and literature. She lives near Washington, DC with her husband, young son, and feisty calico.
Eleonora graduated in Communication Sciences at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2015. The same year she attended a Course in Religious Information at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. In 2018, she obtained a Master Degree in Social and Institutional Communication. She gained experience as an intern at the Communications Office of the Pontifical University in Rome and at COMECE in Brussels. She also volunteered as a communication specialist at some church events in Italy, abroad and in the Vatican City State.
Jerusalem grown Tatia moved to NY to attend film school, and never left. She animated for Nickelodeon, Scholastic and Little Airplane Production focusing on character animation for preschool shows.
Tatia moved to Sydney, Australia to direct the stop-motion animated feature $9.99 - based on the short stories of long time collaborator Etgar Keret, working with the voice talents of Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia among other prominent Australian actors. The film won numerous film festivals and was released around the world in 2009. In 2015, Tatia directed and animated “The Opportunity” based on the short story by Hanoch Levin for a short film program produced by StoryVid with the support of The Goethe Institut.
She is currently animating and writing in NY; living with a soon to be husband and several cats.
Becca Tauscher is a current senior at Hunter College majoring in Classical Studies and Classical Archaeology; she will receive her BA in spring 2021. Her undergraduate thesis focuses on Seven Against Thebes iconography in Etruscan material culture during the 5th-2nd century BCE. Becca works with the Paideia institute as a Latin teacher and tutor at ThinkPrep Academy in Manhattan, and in the past year helped to revive the Latin program at the Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. Her interests are in Latin prose & myth in art, and you can normally find her in the halls of some museum.
CQ Wilder is a graduate from George Mason University with a B.S. in Administration of Justice and a M.ED. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in ESL. She first worked with Paideia in 2016 as a literacy consultant for the Aequora curriculum, and she now manages the Legion Project. Currently, she teaches academic writing to English Language Learners at a community college in Maryland. Moreover, she has over a decade of experience in early childhood education and is also a ghostwriter and published author. In her free time, she loves to travel, spend time with her dog Karla, and help others.
Christopher Childers has a BA in Classics (2005) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry (2016) from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In between, from 2005-2014, he taught Classics and Creative Writing at St. Andrew's School in Middletown, DE. He is currently in the tenth and, hopefully, final year of translating an anthology of Greek and Latin Lyric Poetry: from Archilochus to Martial, under contract with Penguin Classics. Some of his verse translations, from Greek, Latin, and French, can be found here: https://www.literarymatters.org/author/chrischilders/. He currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Sara graduated in 2018 from the University of Aosta Valley in Languages and Communication for Business and Tourism. In 2016 she spent one year in France, attending the University of Savoy Mont Blanc in Chambery, which allowed her to get a double major in French. In 2017 she did a 5-month internship in Valencia (Spain), working as a receptionist in a hostel. She also has experience working as a hostess for international events. Sara's passions include languages, travels, and sports. She currently lives in Civitavecchia, near Rome, even though her origins are tied to the mountains around the Aosta Valley.
David Hewett is Paideia’s Outreach Manager for Classical Tours, as well as instructor in Telepaideia. He has an M.A. in Classics (2009) from the University of Virginia and began a dissertation there on Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, before starting his position at Paideia. He has been a Regular Member of the American School for Classical Studies at Athens (2011-12), a student at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (Spring 2005), and holds a B.A. in Classical Studies from Dickinson College (2006). In addition to this formal education, he studied with Reginald Foster in Rome (2006-07). He lives in Frederick, Maryland.
His teaching currently focuses on Latin Historiography, Latin poetry in Late Antiquity, and religio-philosophical texts in Late Antiquity.
Meg Prom has a BA from Hillsdale College. She came to the Paideia Institute as a summer intern in 2016 and has gone on to design most of Paideia's products since then. She lives in Minnesota.
