ISAC Visiting Scholar Lecture Series

Her research is exploring transmedia adaptation & the role of implicit Classical reception in digital media, particularly non-Classical video games. Her work focuses on The Last of Us franchise where she employs interdisciplinary methods that combine textual analysis with visual and interactive analysis to study how implicit reception is portrayed and understood within contemporary storytelling. She is also interested in questions of how implicit reception finds its way into game narratives via the development process.

Lexie Henning is the producer and host of the Pourdavoud Institute’s podcast, Legacies of Ancient Persia.

She holds a BA in Classics from the University of Missouri and an MSc in Southeast European Studies: Politics, History, Economics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her thesis focused on the impact of Islamic iconoclasm on the Hagia Sophia and its effect on cultural heritage policy in contemporary Turkey. Her research interests include Classical reception in media, nationalism studies, and cultural heritage in political conflict.

In 2020, she co-founded The Ozymandias Project, a humanities focused non-profit aimed at making access to the ancient world more accessible to the general public. Her work in public humanities led her to create and host Ancient Office Hours podcast and co-host The Reading Party Podcast.

Before coming to UCLA, she worked on political campaigns in her home state of Illinois, interned on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., and served on the communications staff for the Illinois State Senate. She is now pursuing her PhD in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol.