It is a great privilege to be a research student at the University of Oxford – especially at Christ Church – and to receive the American Friends Scholarship. The Scholarship has enabled me to pursue my research into Patristics and its necessary connection to Classics.

I am focusing on the ancient figure Origen of Alexandria, who was a significant philosopher and a Christian devoted to the Church. Since Origen was trained under the schema of Greek paideia, which peaks at philosophy, I am exploring how he cultivates an adjacent high intellectual culture for Christianity and how such a culture has influenced practical matters, particularly baptism and martyrdom, which I argue he views as the boundaries of the ideal life. If this is the case, then Origen considers the educational aspect of baptism crucial for starting the Christian life and the category of martyrdom as a superior philosophical death, something well known in contemporary philosophical culture for centuries. For Origen, the schema of life is competitive with other models. This area of research is adding to the scholarship and debate on what the primary influences are on this complex and very influential figure.