Affiliation: Independent scholar (Luxembourg) with Academic Visitor status in the Classics Faculty of the University of Oxford
Keywords: Latin literature, Classical rhetoric, ancient and modern oratory, Cicero, Maurice Garçon
Full profile: Thierry holds master’s degrees in Latin literature and Musicology (University of Tübingen), in Latin language and literature (University of Oxford), and in Criminal law (University of Toulouse Capitole). He received his PhD in Classics from Oxford with a thesis on Cicero’s first work on rhetorical theory.
The grandson of a two-time internal refugee from WWII, he decided to continue with his research as an independent scholar while being professionally active outside of academia, first by getting involved in the management of the ‘refugee crisis’ that started in Europe during his PhD. After a year spent as a volunteer with a UN program, he was appointed head of the refugee program within the Employment Agency of Luxembourg, his home country, in 2017. Sensing that his vocation lay in defending people, he left the civil service in 2020 to study law in order to become an avocat (barrister).
Since 2018 he has been an Associate Researcher, then Academic Visitor in the Oxford Classics Faculty, and in 2022-2025 served on the Executive Council of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR), of which he has been a two-time Research Fellow. In 2024 he was elected to serve on Luxembourg’s Consultative Human Rights Commission, which advises the government and parliament of Luxembourg on human rights issues. Since 2016 he has been one of the organists of the renowned Stahlhuth-Jann organ of St Martin’s, Dudelange.
He is the author of two volumes of works by Claude Debussy and W.A. Mozart arranged for the organ (Carus Verlag). His scholarly book publications so far include a German bilingual edition of Rhetorica ad Herennium (Reclam Verlag) as well as two textbooks combining Classical rhetorical theory with modern law court speeches, Introduction à l’art de la plaidoirie. L’exemple luxembourgeois (Larcier-Promoculture) and L’art de la plaidoirie. Théorie et pratique (Larcier-Bruylant), which includes a selection of 30 law court speeches by leading avocats from Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. Thierry currently works on a major commentary on Book 1 of Cicero’s De Inventione (OUP) in parallel with a bilingual English edition of Cicero’s De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, and Topica (HUP, Loeb Classical Library), as well as on a commentary on Cicero’s Actio Prima in C. Verrem (CUP) and a reedition cum introduction of Maurice Garçon’s treatise on rhetoric and two major law court speeches (Les Belles Lettres).