Nicholas received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College; his master’s degree from the University of Oxford; and his law degree from the College of William and Mary.
In his legal work, Nicholas focused primarily on intellectual property and cultural property issues. Before attending law school, he worked at The Morgan Library & Museum here in New York, where he gained firsthand exposure to the history of the book from its beginnings to the current, digital age.
In his study of the wider Mediterranean world in antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Nicholas, both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, researched a broad range of topics, including, for example, problems in Classical and Byzantine numismatics and sculpture; the origins and development of Christianity; and the interaction between the western and the eastern Churches.
At Columbia, Nicholas has brought all of his previous experiences—his academic studies as well as his legal and museum work—together in the Classical Studies graduate program. In his coursework, he has greatly benefited from the interdisciplinary nature of the Classical Studies program, casting a wide net in terms of his coursework but focusing primarily on Late Antiquity. In his coursework and in his related research, he has had the good fortune to work with the collections in the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In his research, he encountered a reoccurring and problematic theme that is in need of a new analysis: what place, if any, do the Classics of the Greco-Roman world have within the Christian intellectual tradition? Exploring this topic in depth, Nicholas currently is writing a thesis, which will explore the tension and interplay of the Classical and Biblical traditions in early Christianity. Email Nicholas Lamb.