About the laureate from Utoronto (partly on the Utoronto website):

Benjamin Wheaton PhD

Benjamin Wheaton is a PhD at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.  He did his MA in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto after receiving a Bachelor of Humanities from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.  He finished his dissertation on the sixth-century Frankish poet Venantius Fortunatus, research on which he intends to extend his research during his time in Florence. His other research interests lie in early Byzantine history and Latin novels written between the third and fifth centuries CE.