Joshua Zacks was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Classics at the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed his B.A. in Classics at Washington & Lee University in Virginia in 2013, and his M.A. in Classics at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015.

In Mannheim, his research was funded by a year-long research grant from the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst/German Academic Exchange Service). His dissertation project, titled: Agonistic Intertextuality: Studies in Pindar and Bacchylides was supervised by Prof. Olga Levaniouk. The project examines the commissioning and performance of poetry for victorious athletes in fifth century BCE Greece.