Emily Lord-Kambitsch

Emily Lord-Kambitsch, Ph.D, is Assistant Professor, Associate Chair, and Research Coordinator of the Mythological Studies Program. A scholar, poet-storyteller, and native of Santa Barbara, her lifelong exploration of classical mythology is rooted in the study of Greek and Latin language and literature. Emily arrived at Myth at Pacifica in 2020, after 8 years in the UK and a series of lectureships at UCL and UCSB. At Pacifica she teaches courses in Greco-Roman myth, memoir and self-writing, research approaches, and dissertation formulation. Emily has ceaseless curiosity about nature, religious experience, Greco-Roman myth, memory, and the transmission of story and artifacts, personal and ancestral, and is passionate about supporting students’ connection with the perennial stories that call to them through academic, artistic, and personal lenses.

After completing a BA in Classics at UCSB, Emily received a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where her thesis focused on the healing of grief in Roman stoicism, and where she worked as a research assistant for the Oxford Emotions Project, a cross-disciplinary study of definitions of emotions in ancient Greece. In 2016 Emily received her PhD in Classics at University College London (UCL). Her thesis examined emotions as an important mode for audience engagement with representations of antiquity in modern popular fiction, theatre, and cinema. The thesis has yielded articles in publications including the journal, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, and the collections, Rewriting the Ancient World: Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction (Brill, 2017) and Star Attractions: Twentieth-century Movie Magazines and Global Fandom (University of Iowa Press, 2019). Her current research traces the relationship between memory, longing, and selfhood in the voices of women from Greek tragedy, evidenced in a recent article for the “Storying Gendered Emotion in Greek Culture” issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography (2024). Forthcoming scholarship focuses on experiential approaches to classics pedagogy and using depth psychological approaches to classical myth as a lens to understand human-AI relationships (soon to be featured in the edited volume, Depth Psychology, Myth and Artificial Intelligence: Soul and the Machine (2025)) , and she is also co-editing with colleague Devon Deimler a collection on C.G. Jung’s interpretations of classical mythology.

Emily is also passionate about creative and public engagement projects focusing on myth and storytelling. A prize-winning poet (Classical Association Poetry Competition 2024) and author of a poetic memoir, Western Yoga: A Field Report on Desertion and Deliverance (Bottlecap Press, 2023),. her commissioned writing was featured in the showcase, “Weaving Women’s Stories”, at London’s Being Human Festival in 2018, where she continues to offer annual poetry writing workshops. She also regularly facilitates a series of Mythic Embodiment workshops in Santa Barbara, combining elements of intuitive movement and guided visualization to invite participants’ embodied engagement with mythical themes and characters. She performs regularly with Backbone Storytelling and Anima: Theatre of the Feminine Underground, two amazing community enrichment companies based in Santa Barbara.

In 2024 Emily was recognized as a member of the Top 40 Under 40 by the Central Coast Business Times.

See her personal website for more information: https://www.emilylordkambitsch.com