Catherine Conybeare

Catherine Conybeare is a professor of classics at Bryn Mawr College. She has written books and articles across a wide range of topics; she is particularly fond of her book on delight in the western imaginary, The Laughter of Sarah (2013). But she keeps coming back to Augustine of Hippo, because she finds him endlessly interesting company. Her most recent book, Augustine the African, a biographical argument for the significance of Augustine’s Africanness, came out in 2025 and is being translated into six languages. She is now working on a translation into English of Augustine’s Confessions, trying to capture the linguistic vividness and range of registers of that extraordinary work. She has won a number of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been a visiting fellow at Oxford, Cambridge, Toronto, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Originally from the UK, she now lives in Philadelphia and Pisa.