Research
Who Gets to Belong to History?
Stanford Summer Humanities Institute · 2025
This paper traces how Caesar's psychological dichotomy of the Gauls—animus (impulse) and mens (reason)—was repurposed by Renaissance thinkers. Machiavelli transformed it into a model of princely statecraft; Gentili weaponized it to exclude "barbarians" from international law.
Published as the lead article in the inaugural issue of Ephebeia (Paideia Institute)
"Keen of Spirit, Soft of Mind": The Afterlife of Caesar's View of the Gauls in Renaissance Thought
Structuring the Barbarians: Spatial Rhetoric and Imperial Legitimization in Rome and Han China
Advanced Institute of Studies, Princeton · 2026
Pushing the comparison into late antiquity: when conquerors whom their own traditions had called "barbarian" came to power, how did elites in the Vandal Kingdom and Northern Wei rewrite themselves using the classical languages they inherited? Research conducted at IAS, with guidance from Professor Nicola Di Cosmo and Professor Luo Xin (a leading authority on the Northern Wei, then a visiting scholar at IAS).
Praising the "Barbarians": Literary Self-Fashioning in the Vandal Kingdom and Northern Wei China
Independent Research · 2025–2026
An original comparative framework examining how Roman and Han imperial texts constructed "barbarians" through the language of space, and tracing this discursive warfare through settler colonialism and urban transformation.
Recognized by the National Writing Board (Superior rating, top 1%)
Presented at the 4th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG).
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International Classics Conference, Ghana (ICCG)
Selected Presenter · Sept 2026
The first high school student in the conference's history to present peer-reviewed research, co-sponsored by Princeton's Africa World Initiative, the University of Cambridge, and Canada's SSHRC. A 20-minute paper and 10-minute Q&A before leading international scholars.
Philological Groundwork
Vandal Epigram
(ed. Prof. Bret Mulligan, forthcoming 2027)
Sole high school collaborator on a critical edition of late-antique Latin verse; contributed philological analysis and commentary on the poems themselves.
Research Assistant
Two Foundational Pillars
Beyond the Main Thread
Locke's social contract & the modern state
JHSSE, 2025
the metaphysics of "nothing"
John Locke High Commendation, 2024
Beyond Russell's Shadow
Russell's reading of Rousseau & Locke
2025
Should We Trust Moral Intuition?
natural-law ethics
EJHSS, 2024
Relevance of Ancient Philosophies
Greek thought & AI ethics
Is Tax Theft?
John Locke Distinction, 2023
property rights & political philosophy
Is Parallelism Rational?
Leibniz's monads & the mind-body problem
2023
how one group's image is represented and controlled by another
Independent Research, 2026
2024