Stéphane is an MA student in the Classical Studies program. His work focuses on Greek and Roman numismatics, where he has written about the manufacture, distribution, and interpretation of ancient Roman coinage in the third century. His theoretical research investigates the meanings associated with early currencies, inflationary crises, debt, and the role of mint workers in Greek and Roman society. His approach combines philology, extensive classification of coin catalogs, legal texts, epigraphy, and text-criticism. At the crossroads between economic theory, Roman law, semiotics, and cultural studies, Stéphane’s research challenges the definition of “genuine” versus “imitation” currency within numismatics.
Having started his career as a banker in Switzerland, he then moved to Rome, where he obtained a double bachelor’s degree in Art History and Classical Studies at John Cabot University, with a minor in Business Administration. There, he served as a faculty assistant and developed a passion for the Greek and Roman art and archeology, leading him to specialize in numismatics. After completing his degree in Rome, he moved to Paris to attend a one-year MBA program focused on the international art market. Through university projects, he collaborated with the Monnaie de Paris, the world’s oldest mint, to promote youth programs. He is currently a junior member of the American Numismatic Society (ANS).
Stéphane also has a keen interest in philosophy, having explored topics from Kantian aesthetics to the hermeneutic theory of Hans Georg Gadamer and Georg Friedrich Meier. He is particularly attentive to questions surrounding Friedrich August Wolf’s classification of classical archeology into primary and secondary disciplines (Hilfswissenschaften), along with Theodor Mommsen’s corpus of written works. Through his studies of the classical cannon, and its subsequent incorporation into modern culture, Stéphane examines the discipline’s history.