Caitlyn Foster

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Religion under the Early Ptolemies, political interactions between rulers and the ruled, Bronze Age Aegean history and archaeology, the Hellenistic Mediterranean world, textiles and art, and the early Islamic world.

Caitlyn is a third year Master’s student in the History Department. After completing her MA coursework in the Spring, Caitlyn decided to pursue the Public History Certificate while she works on completing her Caldwell Award-winning thesis. The project focuses on the idea of religion as a key aspect to the interaction between the Ptolemaic royal family and their subjects during Egypt’s Hellenistic period. 

Over the summer of 2024, she completed an internship with the born-digital Disability History Museum, helping to raise funds to cover operating costs and writing engaging social media blog posts for the Museum’s 6000-person audience. Her work was generously supported by the Dr. Judith Barter Scholarship.

In her undergraduate years, Caitlyn completed an honors thesis on religion in Ptolemaic Egypt, published a paper on women in Livy’s Histories with the UMass Undergraduate History Journal, and presented at the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and it’s Commonwealth Honors College in 2022 with a BA in History and a minor in Classics. The following summer, she participated in the Kea Archaeological Research Survey (KARS) through the Irish Institute for Hellenic Studies, studying Bronze Age ceramic sherds, a research interest she would later return to for her fields.