Melinda is Lecturer in Classics at Harris Manchester College and at Jesus College, where she specialises in the teaching of Greek and Latin Languages. She is a member of the Faculty of Classics, and is Senior Member of, and Faculty Adviser to, the Oxford Latinitas Society, which uses immersive teaching of Latin and Greek to enable people from all backgrounds to access both languages with ease and fluency (https://www.oxfordlatinitas.org). Besides her college teaching, she teaches immersive Latin classes for the OLS every term. Her research interests focus on the social history of ancient medicine, and she provides thesis supervision on various aspects of health, illness and medical treatment in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Melinda read Literae Humaniores at St Anne’s College, Oxford, followed by two years as Research Assistant to Professor Keith Hopkins, with whom she collaboratively authored a chapter of his book Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983). She then decided to try life outside academia, working first in overseas development and subsequently in a series of leadership roles in UK health charities and public bodies, for which she was appointed OBE in 2003. She returned to academic life in 2009. Her doctoral research, undertaken at Christ Church, Oxford, brought together both strands of her career in a study of the 1st century Greek doctor Rufus of Ephesus’s unique treatise on the importance of questioning patients about all aspects of their life and condition.
