Ari is a first-year student in the Classical Studies Ph.D. program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Archaeology from the University of Michigan (High Distinction and High Honors, 2023). Additionally, she has had the opportunity to participate in fieldwork with the Olynthos Project (2022) and the Pella Urban Dynamics Project (2022, 2023), where she has worked in excavation, record keeping and trench supervision, total station data collection, and the processing and cataloging of finds. She has also worked on the digital reconstruction of the Derveni Papyrus at the University of Michigan (2020-2023).
In her studies, Ari is most interested in exploring the Hellenistic world through an interdisciplinary approach, with an emphasis on archaeology and material culture. Her research so far has focused on Hellenistic Anatolia, including her senior honors thesis, "The Return of the King: Continuity and Change in the Kingship Imagery of Seleucid Coinage in Western Anatolia." This project allowed her to explore themes of identity and propaganda in Hellenistic Sardis using historical, archaeological, and literary sources, and helped to foster a growing interest in numismatics. Moving forward, Ari would like to continue her study of Hellenistic Anatolia using similarly interdisciplinary methods to investigate cultural contact and its impact on the construction and reception of identity.