Joshua David McDermott

My PhD investigated communication between leaders and advisers at Hellenistic royal courts. It looked at the need for kings and queens in Ancient Greece to have access to honest counsel (parrhesia) from their scholarly friends (philoi) at court. Frank speech from well-intentioned friends was valued by wise kings and queens to cut through the noise of the usual flatterers which tended to surround them. I argue that geography, and science more broadly, were ways to express this frank speech with tact — an argument developed further in my forthcoming monograph, Geography in the Hellenistic Courts: Propaganda, Parrhesia, and Bending Space (Cambridge University Press), and in my article "Seleucus' Special Military Operation" (Antichthon, 2026).

I am fascinated by the role that scientific and academic truth-telling plays for effective governance, cutting through the issues of hierarchy so that ideas can flow more freely.