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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 / PGR topics

Postgraduate training

The department has a Taught MA programme [Ancient Visual and Material CultureLink opens in a new window], including optional modules delivered by the British School at Rome (Postgraduate City of Rome course) and the British School at Athens (including Epigraphy, Numismatics), 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 of the Senatus Consultum de Cn Pisone Patre (CUP 2023), 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 worked on the team of Annee Epigraphique for several years from 2013, writing annual reports on epigraphic finds in Roman Britain. She is currently working on a project with the CiMAT research group in Warwick Manufacturing Group led by Prof Mark Williams, exploring the potential of drone-scanning to improve our knowledge of 'ghost inscriptions' high up on Roman arches and temples. This complements the paper that this team produced on the 'ghost inscription' of the Flavian amphitheatre in Rome, to be published shortly in the Journal of Roman Archaeology. 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). She has a contract to write two new Loeb volumes covering Augustan and Julio-Claudian documents.  
  • 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) and also edited Material Dynamics of Festivals in the Graeco-Roman East (Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents, 2023).

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 is working with Paula Wilson, Mike Donnelly, and Mark Williams of Warwick Manufacturing Group on the use of 3-D imaging in improving our knowledge of cultural heritage.
  • Alison Cooley is joint series editor, with Prof. A. Meadows, of Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents (Oxford University Press).
Recent publications in epigraphy

Current postgraduates

  • Epigraphic Collections and the Roman Antiquarian Market in 18th-Century Italy: The Role of Scipione Maffei (1675-1755) (PhD 2023-) Ludovico Bevilacqua, Cotutelle with Venezia Ca' Foscari
  • Empire and the Dynamics of Local Identity in Roman Baetica, 50 BC - AD 212 (PhD 2024-) Carlos Enríquez de Salamanca
  • Cultural Memories in Rome’s Fora (PhD 2024-) Chris Parr
  • From 'Paganism' to Christianity in Italia Cisalpina (PhD 2025-) Niccolò Gerardo, Cotutelle with Venezia Ca' Foscari, Eutopia funded
  • Creating the past and the future in Roman private funerary portraiture. Representation and identity in Rome 50 BCE - 100 CE (PhD 2025-) Sophie Ploeg

  • Auxiliary Tombstones: Analysing ‘Ethnic’ Groups through a Postcolonial Lens (PhD 2025-) Riccardo Bianco

    Departmental bursaries and university scholarships are available for research postgraduates.

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