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Classics and Ancient History

Epigraphy at Warwick

We are keen to encourage applications from postgraduates interested in pursuing research involving classical epigraphy. Several members of staff at Warwick are actively engaged in epigraphic research, whilst others also use epigraphy in their wider research contexts. We have particular expertise in the Roman world, both Latin West and Greek East, as well as Classical Greece.

Postgraduate training / Members of Staff / Research / Publications / Students

Postgraduate training

The department has a Taught MA programme [Ancient Visual and Material Culture], including streams incorporating the Postgraduate City of Rome course at the BSR [Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome], and postgraduate courses at the BSA [Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Greece] in which students have the opportunity to specialise in epigraphy. Our students are encouraged to join the British Epigraphy Society and to participate in the training offered by the Society.

Members of Staff

  • Prof Alison Cooley - works on Latin epigraphy in particular, focusing especially on Rome, Italy, and the western Roman empire. She has published an edition and commentary of the Res Gestae divi Augusti (CUP 2009), and The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy (CUP 2012), has edited several volumes of papers on epigraphic topics (The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy (BICS suppl. 2000); The Afterlife of Inscriptions (BICS suppl. 2000); Becoming Roman, Writing Latin? (JRA suppl. 2002); Inventive Inscriptions: the Organization of Epigraphic Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century (Special issue of Journal of the History of Collections), jointly edited with Dan Orrells (2014). She was one of the team producing the last two quinquennial surveys of Roman inscriptions in Journal of Roman Studies (2007, 2012), and joined the team of Annee Epigraphique in 2013, to write annual reports on epigraphic finds in Roman Britain. She is currently working on an edition and commentary of the Senatus Consultum de Cn Pisone Patre for CUP. She is also committed to making inscriptions available to non-linguists via her collaboration in LACTOR sourcebooks (The Age of Augustus; Tiberius to Nero) and Pompeii and Herculaneum: a sourcebook (2013). 
  • Prof Michael Scott - works with literary, material, and epigraphic evidence from the archaic, classical, and hellenistic periods of Greek history, with a particular focus on Greek religion and Greek sanctuaries. He is currently working on a series of articles that look at the perception and mechanics of Greek sanctuaries in the archaic and classical periods, one of which examines how the placement of different types of inscriptions within sanctuaries both contributed to their meaning and purpose as well as impacting on the way in which visitors used and understand sacred space.
  • Dr David Fearn - incorporates epigraphy into his work on Greek lyric poetry and contexts for memorialization in archaic and classical Greece.
  • Prof Zahra Newby - is interested in the interaction of art and text, especially the juxtaposition of images and inscriptions in individual monuments or spaces. She is co-editor of Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World (CUP 2007).
  • Prof Suzanne Frey-Kupper is part of the collaborative working group investigating with Jonathan Prag, Filippo Battistoni, Alessia DiMartino, Lorenzo Campagna and others the Taormina Financial Documents. She is focussing on coin denominations, metrology and aspects on finances arising from the inscriptions. The studies on these extraordinary documents from Hellenistic Sicily will be published in a volume of the OUP series of Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents.

Current research projects and collaborative work

  • Research project - Roman Statutes: Alison Cooley is part of the international team led by Clifford Ando working on a new edition of M.H. Crawford,ed. Roman Statutes (BICS, 1996).
  • Collaborative project - Alison Cooley has been working with Paul Wilson of Warwick Manufacturing Group on the use of 3-D imaging/printing and cultural heritage, in a project focusing upon the inscription of Togidubnus from Chichester, funded by the Institute for Advanced Study at Warwick.
  • Alison Cooley has been a member of the team of Année Epigraphiquesince 2013, and prepares the annual survey of epigraphy for the province of Britannia. She would be delighted to receive offprints/ information about relevant publications.
  • Alison Cooley is also joint series editor, with Prof. A. Meadows, of Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents (Oxford University Press). The series includes the following recent volumes:
  • David Fearn is currently investigating epigraphic and non-epigraphic means of memorializing athletic and other achievements in late archaic and early classical Greece, looking at crossovers between poetry and material culture in a diverse range of contexts. Building on his previous contextual studies of epinician poetry (Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition (2007); Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry (ed., 2010)), he is developing a broader view of the similarities and differences, tensions and complementarities, between material modes of commemoration, via inscriptions and sculpture, and non-material, orally delivered, poetic modes. A paper entitled 'Kleos v Stone? Lyric Poetry and Contexts for Memorialization' is published in the proceedings of the 2009 University of Manchester Literature and Epigraphy Conference, edited by Polly Low and Peter Liddel, Inscriptions and their uses in Greek and Latin Literature (OSAD series, 2013).
Recent publications in epigraphy

  • 'New Approaches to the Epigraphy of the Roman World', (Alison Cooley) Journal of Epigraphic Studies 1: 27-46 (2018)

  • ‘Breaking through the language barrier – bringing ‘dead’ languages to life through sensory and narrative engagement’ Museum Management and Curatorship, 33:5, 428-446, (Abigail Baker, with Alison Cooley) DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2018.1501601 (2018)

  • 'Monumental Latin inscriptions from Roman Britain in the Ashmolean Museum collection', (Alison Cooley) Britannia https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X18000260 (Published online: 18 June 2018)

  • ‘Latin inscriptions in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford’, (Alison Cooley) ZPE 205: 253-67 (2018)
  • (2019) ‘The curious case of Flora’, (Alison Cooley) in Animo Decpiendi? Rethinking Fakes and Authorship in Classical, Late Antique and Early Christian Works, eds A. Gurzman and J. Martínez
  • (2019) 'Two Latin Inscriptions from Ephesos in the Ashmolean Museum', in From Document to History: Epigraphic Insights into the Greco-Roman World, eds C. Norena, N. Papzarkados (Brill, Leiden) 431-54

  • (2019) ‘The Res Gestae in its provincial contexts’, Lampas 52.3: 262-75

  • (2021) 'Bretagne’, Année Epigraphique 2018: 403-18

  • (2020) ‘Bretagne’, Année Epigraphique 2017: 397-411
Current postgraduates

    Departmental bursaries and university scholarships are available for research postgraduates.