Collin Moat

Collin joined the Department of Classics at UCLA in 2026. He earned his PhD in Classics from UCLA, MA in Classics from the University of Arizona, and BA in Classics and History from St. Olaf College. He has held Regular and Associate Memberships at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens which were supported by the Thomas Day Seymour Fellowship (2022–2023) and the Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship (2025–2026).

In his research, Collin focuses on how classical cultures explored the lives of nonhumans in their literature and art and thereby conceptualized humankind’s place within the natural environment of the ancient Mediterranean. His book project, The Material of Mortality: Trees, Wood, and the Ecological Poetics of Homeric Poetry, analyzes the aesthetic, material, and cultural value of trees and wood in Homeric poetry and examines how the life cycles of trees—especially their deaths and material afterlives—are entangled in Homeric conceptions of human mortality. His article, “Sympathy with the Spear: Iliadic Tree Similes and Achilles’ Entanglement with the Pelian Spear,” offers a view into the larger project. Additionally, he is working on a couple article-length pieces, one on speaking trees in Aesopic fable and another on the role of the alpha privative in Hesiod’s delineation of the cosmos in the Theogony.

Collin is also dedicated to examining the interconnectedness of human culture, the environment, and historical landscapes through digital visualization tools. His ongoing digital humanities projects include using 3D models to chart the changing prominence of the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum and mapping the sacred groves of the ancient Aegean according to available textual, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence.

Collin enjoys teaching a wide array of classes. Current and past courses include the elementary and intermediate sequences of Latin and Greek; reading courses on the Odyssey and the New Testament; general education courses on classical myth and ancient Greek civilization; and an upper-division course on the environmental imagination in ancient Greece.