Christina DiFabio
- Lecturer in History
Contact Info
Biography —
Christina DiFabio is an archaeologist and ancient historian whose research focuses on the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean. Since 2015, she has been part of the Notion Archaeological Project which aims to study the life of the Greek city of Notion (in modern western Türkiye). She has also conducted fieldwork at Labraunda (Türkiye), Corinth (Greece) and Vigla (Cyprus). In addition, she is a trained museum educator and has worked at the Getty Villa Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (University of Michigan).
Education —
Research —
Christina’s research focuses on local responses to the greater political changes after the death of Alexander the Great and the resulting Hellenistic kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean. She is interested in how local elite communities in particular created a shared sense of class between settlements and how they relied upon this peer network for political alliances and urban development in response to the changing Hellenistic world. She is also Senior Archaeologist and Small Finds Specialist at the Notion, where she is supervising the excavation of a late Hellenistic house.
Information about Notion can be found here:
Notion Archaeological Project – Archaeology of an Ionian Greek city in western Türkiye (umich.edu)
Research interests:
- Urbanism
- Domestic archaeology
- Object studies
- Museum learning
Teaching —
Christina teaches ancient history courses focusing on the Mediterranean and Middle East. She teaches survey courses on Roman History and Greek, Near Eastern, and Egyptian History as well as specialty courses on Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, and the Hellenistic period.
Selected Publications —
Forthcoming in 2024. DiFabio, C., B. Olson, T. Landvatter, and J. Stephens. “The Metal Finds from Pyla-Vigla: An Early Hellenistic Fort in Southern Cyprus.” Journal of Hellenistic Pottery and Material Culture 7.
Under Review. DiFabio, C. “Small Finds” in Chapter 9: Artifacts from Notion in the Notion Archaeological Survey Volume, edited by Christopher Ratté, Felipe Rojas, and Angela Commito.
Under Review. DiFabio, C. “Pottery from Previous Excavations” in Chapter 9: Artifacts from Notion in the Notion Archaeological Survey Volume, edited by Christopher Ratté, Felipe Rojas, and Angela Commito.
Selected Presentations —
January 2024. “Reconstructing the Ancient Context of a Grave Assemblage from Notion.” 15-minute presentation at the 2024 Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
August 2023. DiFabio, C. and M. MacKinnon. “Art Break: A Dog’s Life in Antiquity.” 45-minute online program for the Getty Villa Museum in Pacific Palisades, CA. 25-minute presentation with 20-minute Q&A.
September 2022. “Peer Polity Interaction and Creation of Community in the Urbanization of Hellenistic Western Anatolia.” 15-minute presentation at the 2022 European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting in Budapest, Hungary.
January 2019. “Past and Present Research at Notion, Turkey: Using Museum and Archival Research to Contextualize New Results.” 20-minute presentation at the 2019 Archaeological Institute of America Meeting in San Diego, CA.
Awards & Honors —
2023–2024 Loeb Classical Library Foundation, Postdoctoral Fellowship completed at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
2021–2022 Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) Predoctoral Fellowship, Koç University, Istanbul
July–August 2021 American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) Advanced Turkish Language Fellowship
2017–2018 Philip Lockhart Fellowship, Regular Member, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Service —
Christina is on the editorial board for Rhea Classical Reviews, an open access book review journal that prioritizes underrepresented voices.