William J. Dominik

William J. Dominik is an Australian-American scholar of Classical Studies. He is presently Visiting Professor-elect of Classical Studies at the University of Juiz de Fora; Integrated Researcher of Classical Studies at the University of Lisbon; and Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Otago.
Dominik is the son of university professors of classical music and spent his childhood in a number of states in the USA. After studying Classics at the University of Durham in 1973–1974 and completing his student teaching at the American School Foundation of Mexico City in 1975, he earned a BA in Classics and English from the University of the Pacific and a California Teaching Credential from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing in 1975. Dominik left the USA in 1976 to live overseas for what has amounted to all but a few years. A resident of Sintra, Portugal as of 2018, Dominik possesses dual Australian and American citizenship. He is married to Brazilian artist and former nutritionist Najla Barroso Dominik, a member of the Academy of Letters and Arts of Salvador, Brazil.
Dominik received his PhD in Classical Studies from Monash University in 1989 after gaining an MA in Classical Humanities from Texas Tech University in 1982. He taught at the University of Natal from 1991 to 2001, where he rose to the rank of Professor and Chair of Classics and Director of the Program in Classics. Dominik moved to the University of Otago as Professor and Chair of Classics in 2002, where he served as Head of the Department of Classics from 2002 to 2009; he was awarded Professor Emeritus status in 2015.
An idiosyncratic aspect of Dominik's career has been its wide international dimension. In addition to holding the aforecited posts at the University of Natal and the University of Otago, he has served (or undertaken to serve) in recent years as Visiting Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Juiz de Fora (2024–); Invited/Visiting Professor, Integrated Researcher, and Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon (2018–2024); and CAPES Visiting Foreign Professor at the Federal University of Bahia (2010, 2016–2017). He has also held visiting professorships and other teaching/research positions at Texas Tech University (1981–1982, 1990–1991), Monash University (1985–1988), University of Leeds (1997–1998), University of Cambridge (2000–2001), University of Edinburgh (2006–2007), and the University of Oxford (2013).
Dominik is the author or editor of several hundred publications (mainly chapters in edited books and journal articles and reviews), including sixteen monographs, on Latin literature, especially Roman epic of the Flavian period; Roman rhetoric; the classical tradition and reception; lexicography; etymology; and other topics. Dominik's research is significant for its emphasis upon the political, especially critical and dissident, aspects of imperial Roman literature (to which one critic refers as “la osadía de Dominik"); its positive hermeneutic approach to the literature and rhetoric of the imperial era; and its treatment of a range of writers in Latin literature and rhetoric from the Early Republic through Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period.
A distinctive feature of Dominik's research and pedagogical output is its collaborative nature, which is evident especially through the publication of various co-edited books and a journal. He was the founding editor and manager of the Classics series Scholia: Studies in Classical Antiquity (1992-2011). In addition to having served as a referee for over sevenscore publishers, journals, and institutions, Dominik has supervised, examined, and moderated over a gross of postgraduate and honours dissertations.
Dominik has delivered (or undertaken to deliver) over eightscore lectures and papers, including invited or commemorative presentations such as a University of Cambridge Faculty of Classics Literature Seminar (2000); an Inaugural Professorial Lecture at the University of Otago (2002); the keynote address at the Federal University of Bahia Inaugural Classics Colloquium (2010); the Third Biennial Constantine Leventis Memorial Lecture at the University of Ibadan (2010); a Royal Society of New Zealand National Identity Symposium Presentation (2011); an Oxford Philological Society lecture (2013); the Inaugural Seminar at the Federal University of Sergipe Postgraduate Program in History (2016); and a keynote speech at the Thirty-fifth Biennial Conference of the Classical Association of South Africa (2025).
Dominik has received over a couple of hundred individual research fellowships, grants, and awards (including renewals and sponsored visits), such as a Commonwealth Fellowship at the University of Leeds (1997-1998); a South African Human Sciences Research Council Established Researcher Grant (1997-1998); a Visiting Research Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge (2000-2001); an Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (2006-2007); a Visiting Research Centre Associateship at St. John's College, Oxford (2013); a Plumer Visiting Research Fellowship at St. Anne's College, Oxford (2013); and a Foundation for Science and Technology Research Fellowship at the University of Lisbon (2019-2022).