Dr. Laurens van der Wiel is a classicist focusing on early imperial Greek literature. He is mainly interested in the oeuvre of the prolific writer and philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. 45-120 CE), who was also a priest of the Oracle of Delphi. In his spare time, van der Wiel enjoys contributing to artistic projects that promote and stimulate public interest in ancient languages and culture.

After having obtained his master’s degree in ancient Greek and Latin literature and linguistics in 2018 at the Catholic University of Leuven, Laurens van der Wiel started his PhD in classical studies at the same institute, as part of the research project “Longing for Perfection. Living the Perfect Life in Late Antiquity – A Journey Between Ideal and Reality”. In 2022, he defended his doctoral dissertation. Since then he has been active as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw, as part of the research project “Thinking of Thinking. Conceptual Metaphors of Cognition in the Plutarchan Corpus”. His book entitled “An Opaque Mirror for Trajan. A Literary Analysis and Interpretation of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata” was published in January 2024 by Leuven University Press.

Laurens van der Wiel is also part of Iuvenalis Pictures and plays the role of Dionysus in “Frogs. World’s First Film in Ancient Greek”, directed by Thibaut Lejeune. For this film project, van der Wiel has also performed various other functions (Script Supervisor, Head of Translations and Subtitles, author of the opening couplet in Ancient Greek, painter of the logo). Together with Lejeune, he also edited a text accompanying the film, aiming to guide teachers at secondary education.