Berenice Verhelst is assistent professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam. She was trained (MA 2009, PhD 2014) at the University of Ghent, where she was also active from 2015 to 2021 as a postdoctoral research fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO Vlaanderen).

Her research focusses on the greco-roman epic tradition. She particularly specialises in Late Antiquity and more specifically the Greek epics of Nonnus of Panopolis (5th c. AD) and the epyllia and ecphrastic poems of the so-called Nonnian poets. She works with the methods and terminology of narratology, genre studies and ancient rhetoric. As one of the coördinators of the DICES project (https://www.dices.uni-rostock.de/) she is particularly interested in combining narratology and digital methods and quantifying the striking differences regarding style and structure of Late Antique (secular and Christian) versus Archaic and Classical epic poetry.

The results of her doctoral research project on direct speech in the Dionysiaca  appeared in 2017 with Brill (+ digital appendix). She is editor of Nonnus in Context IV. Poetry at the Crossroads (Peeters, forthcoming 2022) and Greek and Roman Poetry of Late Antiquity. Form, tradition and context (co-editor Tine Scheijnen, CUP, forthcoming 2022). Other personal interests are translation theory and practice and the history of translating the Classics.