Isabel Ruffell

Ruffell received her DPhil. from the Faculty of Literae Humaniores, Oxford University, in 1999. Her doctoral thesis was entitled A Poetics of the Absurd: Reforming Attic Old Comedy.[1] Her supervisor was Oliver Taplin.[2]

Following her DPhil, Ruffell was first a lecturer at Oxford University and then held a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church College, Oxford. In 2007, Ruffell provided the English translation for the National Theatre of Scotland's production of the Bacchae, an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides. Her translation was adapted by David Greig and directed by John Tiffany. The play opened the Edinburgh International Festival in 2007.[3][4][5]

Ruffell's doctoral research was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press as Politics and Anti-realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible.[6]

Ruffell's research project, Hero of Alexandria and his Theatrical Automata, ran from 2014 until 2018, and was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£282,881).

• I. Ruffell and L. I. Hau (eds) Truth and History in the Ancient World: Pluralising the Past (London: Routledge, 2016)
• Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012)
• Politics and Anti-realism in Athenian Old Comedy: the Art of the Impossible (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011)