About
I’m Alexandros Kalogrianitis (Alex), a third-year Philosophy student at UCL. The philosophy, the classics and the software are three sides of one question: how anyone gets from words in a language to what was meant by them.
Philosophy is where I work out what understanding is supposed to be. Classics is where I have to do it in practice, on texts written two and a half thousand years ago, in languages I work through word by word before I can argue with anyone about what they say. The software came out of noticing which half of that reading was mechanical and which half was mine. The dated record, with certifications, is on my CV.
What I study
Most of what I actually spend time on sits between ancient Greek philosophy, political philosophy, and classical languages.
I translate Plato, Thucydides, Virgil and Catullus straight from the Greek and Latin. Working through the original is the only way I have found to really get at what is being argued, rather than settling for someone else’s version of it.
The essays on this site run from Marx on ideology and Kant on genius through to whether language acquisition is innate. The classics pieces work the same way, from the primary text outwards, including two original compositions of my own in Greek and Latin.
What I build
I build software around the same problem from the other side. Enoda is a macOS app that parses Greek and Latin grammar where you are reading it, so I don’t have to break concentration to look something up. It deliberately doesn’t translate and doesn’t use AI, because the judgment calls are the part worth keeping. Remeta is a vocabulary app I built to hold onto new words, around 70,000 entries now across seven languages.
Both do the same job. They take the mechanical work off the reader and leave the interpretation alone.
Research interests
Ancient Greek philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, classical languages, and computational approaches to reading.
Experience
Flylane
Worked in a two-person team, alongside the founders, on how to position Curio: an AI study tool that turns notes, PDFs and lecture recordings into quizzes, flashcards and mock exams, aimed at sixth-form and university students. Ran the Instagram and TikTok accounts the company used to reach students directly, and reported back on user engagement and pricing feedback at weekly product reviews.
Tutor Doctor, and independently
6 hours a week of one-to-one tuition across 3 students, in 11+ entrance exams and GCSE Maths and Latin. Lessons are planned around each student’s specific gaps, and I handle parents’ expectations directly when progress is slower than hoped. All three have improved their grades and confidence.
Education
BA Philosophy. First-class results in Years 1 and 2.
International Baccalaureate, 43/45 (HL Philosophy, Latin, Classical Greek, all 7s). GCSEs: nine 9s and one 8.
Interests
Currently working through Thucydides’ account of the plague at Athens, the opening of Aeneid II, and the start of Catullus’s Attis, having finished Plato’s Ion and six of Catullus’s shorter poems. I was an academic mentor at King Edward’s from 2022–2024, walking students through texts the same way I like doing it myself, and I’m the incoming Social Secretary of the UCL Philosophy Society.
Outside that: cycling, tennis and squash, and the Cypriot Hellenic Society.
Languages · English, native. Greek, limited working proficiency. Ancient Greek and Latin, read.