Johanna Hanink earned her PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge (Queens' College). Her work in classics focused on classical Athens, particularly the cultural life of the city's fourth century BCE. She is also interested in the intersections between modern politics and ideas about ancient Greece (and antiquity more generally).
The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Harvard University Press 2017) is her latest book; it explores how Western fantasies of classical antiquity have created a particularly fraught relationship between the European West and the country of Greece, especially in the context of Greece's recent "tale of two crises."
She is also author of Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy (Cambridge University Press 2014) and co-editor, with Richard Fletcher, of the volume Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists, and Biography (Cambridge University Press 2016).
She is active in Brown's Program in Modern Greek Studies and is on the board of the Modern Greek Studies Association. She is also on the editorial boards of The Journal of Modern Greek Studies and Eidolon.