I am an Assistant Professor of Computational Classics and, by courtesy, of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I direct the Low-Resource Language (LOREL) Lab and serve as a faculty affiliate with @Spatial, the Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science. As a first-generation college graduate, I benefited from strong mentorship and scholarship support throughout my education. My experiences deeply impact how I teach, advise, and build research communities today.
I earned a B.A. in Classical Languages and a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics at the University of Puget Sound in 2019. I graduated summa cum laude with university-wide and departmental honors. Even as an undergraduate, I was curious about how ancient languages and AI could support each other, and in particular, how ancient languages could help us build better, more sustainable, and more reliable machine learning systems.
I earned my Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University (2024), supported by fellowships in research computing, digital humanities, and data science. My dissertation, A Computational Model of the Homeric Formula, developed new computational tools to model Homeric diction and oral-traditional structure. I also hold an M.A. in Education (emphasis: Education Data Science) from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education (2023).
Before joining UCSB, my professional roles included Adjunct Faculty at the University of Puget Sound, High-Performance Research Computing Consultant at the Stanford Research Computing Center, and Technical Data Science Mentor for Stanford’s Data Science for Social Good program. I also supervised and mentored dozens of students at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).
You can often find me in Greece, doing research, presenting at conferences, or teaching study abroad. When I’m not in Greece (and not in my office) I’m usually biking around Santa Barbara with my dog or reading in the grass with my tortoise.
Annie K. Lamar 