Fellows » Current Fellows » IHUM Fellow: Alice Van Harten, PhD
Alice studied Classics and Theology at the University of Leiden and holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge. Her research deals with questions in ancient ethics, politics and theology, especially those raised by Plato’s dialogues. In a forthcoming paper she reinterprets a puzzling account given by Socrates on the good nature of death at the end of Plato’s Apology. Rather than taking it to be a strictly logical argument on death, she suggests that Socrates prompts us, through a number of rhetorical moves, to read the account ironically, in order to make us reflect not on the nature of death, but on the nature of a good life.
Alice recently returned to the Bay Area and the IHUM Program, in which she was a fellow from 2003-2006. After IHUM, she worked in business, first as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and then in the Science & Technology division of publisher Elsevier.
In her free time, she enjoys swimming and going on hikes with her husband and her son.