Thomas Avery

Biography

Thomas has called Illinois and California home. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in History from Cedarville University in 2025. A semester abroad in Oxford, spent tracing early Christological development and reading Syriac martyr acts, solidified his love of Late Antiquity. These studies inspired Thomas’s senior capstone on population displacement during the Roman–Persian wars, for which he received the best paper award in history. His academic interests center on communities in the late ancient Middle East, particularly how they interacted with imperial capitols, imagined the heavens above them, and honored the dead buried beneath them. Thomas will continue his study of Syriac, Greek, and Latin at Notre Dame and hopes to expand his research into Aramaic literature more broadly. A belief in the transformative power of education fuels his study and directs his career aspirations toward teaching. In his free time, Thomas enjoys reading novels or watching the rain with a cup of tea.