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European Network of Dravidian Studies (ENDS)
ENDSEuropean Network of
Dravidian Studies

Photo: G. Ravindran/N. Ramaswamy/J.-L. Chevillard

Dr Victor D’Avella

davella

Member of TST

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University of Oxford

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Victor D’Avella (b. 1982) studied classics (Latin and Greek) and Linguistics at NYU. Completed an MPhil at Oxford in Comparative Philology (Indo-Iranian and Greek) with a thesis on select hymns from the Paippalāda Atharvaveda (critical edition, translation, and notes). Teaching Fellow at Columbia University (2007-2009). He defenced his PhD at the University of Chicago in the Department for South Asian Languages and civilizations in 2018. He has taught Sanskrit at the beginner and intermediate levels for many years both at universities as well as privately. He has recently begun teaching Classical Tamil at the Classical Tamil Seminar in Pondicherry. From 2014 to 2019 he was a researcher of NETamil group C Tolkāppiyam. From March 2019 to October 2020 he worked as a Postdoc researcher for TST; since October 2020 he is a Sanskrit Lecturer in Oxford.

Research interests: Grammatical traditions of South Asia (Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu), Sanskrit and Tamil poetry and poetics, history of linguistics, early European grammars of South Indian languages.

Publications

  • “The Vīracōḻiyam: A Tamil Grammar Through the Eyes of Sanskrit.” In: Ciotti, Giovanni and McCann, Erin (eds) Linguistics and Textual Aspects of Multilingualism in South India. EFEO-IFP: collection indologie 144 – NETamil series 7, Pondichérry 2020(in print), pp. 565-690.
  • “The Beginnings of the Tamil Commentarial Tradtion.” In: Anandakichenin, Suganya and D’Avella, Victor (eds) The Commentary Idioms of the Tamil Learned Traditions. EFEO-IFP: collection indologie 141 – NETamil series 5, Pondichéry 2020, pp. 27-70.