About

I studied 'Greats' at St John's College, Oxford between 1989 and 1993, and subsequently carried out my research for my D.Phil. (The role of inscribed monuments in transforming public space at Pompeii and Ostia) at the same college, latterly as North Senior Scholar. After a period of research at the British School at Rome as holder of a Rome Award in Ancient Italian Studies, I then took up a joint post as Junior Research Fellow (Corpus Christi College, Oxford) and Murray Fellow (History Faculty, Oxford) before joining Warwick in 2000.

Research interests

I am interested in all aspects of the Roman world - social, cultural, economic, and political. My research focuses upon Roman Italy and the early Principate in particular, and upon the use of inscriptions in both ancient and modern times. I enjoy the interchange of ideas between teaching and researching. In 2009, I produced a new edition and commentary of the Res Gestae divi Augusti, and in 2012 The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy. A new edition of Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook appeared in 2014, and the edited volume, A Companion to Roman Italy (Blackwell-Wiley) in 2016. I have prepared the section on 'Bretagne' for Annee Epigraphique for the last nine years. I am currently working on an edition and commentary of the senatus consultum de Cn Pisone patre (Cambridge University Press). Also in preparation are Pompeii: An Archaeological Site History (2nd edition) and Herculaneum: An Archaeological Site History, both for Bloomsbury and two volumes of Julio-Claudian Documents for the Loeb Classical LIbrary.

From Oct 2013- Dec 2017, I was Principal Investigator on the Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project, funded by the AHRC. I am a member of the British Epigraphy Society, and am on the advisory board for the research projects 'Latin Now' (PI Alex Mullen), ERC Starting Grant, 2017-2022 and 'Crossreads: Text, materiality, and multiculturalism at the crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean’ (PI Jonathan Prag), ERC Advanced grant, 2020-2025. I have served on the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for two three-year periods, and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Roman Studies 2013-2018, whilst also taking on shared responsibility for Papers of the British School at Rome from 2017. I have acted as Honorary Publications Officer for the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford since the Centre's inception in 1997, and I am joint series editor (with Andrew Meadows) of the Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents, published by Oxford University Press. I have been a Faculty Member for the British School at Rome from 2014. From January 2019, I have acted as President of the International Digital Epigraphy Association. I am also a member of the international research team, led by Prof Clifford Ando (Chicago), working on Roman Statutes.

Publications in press

• 'Augustus' in Oxford Classical Dictionary (digital edition: New York, Oxford University Press)

Teaching and supervision

Undergraduate:

In 2004 I was awarded The Butterworth Memorial Teaching Award by the University; in 2013 an IATL Pedagogic Intervention grant, for the project 'Students as Researchers at the British Museum'; in 2019 an IATL Academic Fellowship, ‘Redesigning CX110 (Roman Culture and Society, core module)’, and IAS Award for a public engagement project jointly with Warwick Manufacturing Group, ‘3-D Scanning and Roman Heritage: A Test Case in Public Engagement’.

Postgraduate:

• Taught MA in Ancient Visual and Material Culture (Classical Epigraphy; Advanced Ancient Language; Ancient Visual Material Culture)

Current pg dissertations supervised:

• Coping with Catastrophe: Political Responses to Natural Disasters between 100 BC and AD 138 (PhD 2018-) Jonathan Madge
• Imperial Authority in the Severan Dynasty (PhD 2018-) Kieren Johns (CADRE scholarship) (jointly with Clare Rowan)
• Imperial women of the third century (PhD 2021-) Richard Allard-Meldrum (jointly with Clare Rowan)
• Neoclassicism in Britain (MA R 2019-) Lydia Wardle

Full list of postgraduate dissertations supervised

Research degrees examined:

• Roman funerary monuments and the construction of identity in Pompeii, Gaul and Deva between 50 BC and AD 250 (MA, Warwick)
• Reshaping Jewish identity: the role of insiders and outsiders in the early Roman period (MA, Warwick)
• The Dynamics of Civic Euergetism in Spain, Gaul and Africa (D.Phil., Oxford)
• Divine justification: Flavian imperial cult (M.Litt., Oxford)
• Asinius Pollio (PhD, University of Western Australia)
• Augustus and the Roman Provinces of Iberia (PhD, Liverpool)
• Hope, fear, and conceptions of the future in the early Principate (DPhil., Oxford)
• Inscribing Domestic Space in Pompeii (MA R, Macquarie)
• A linguistic analysis of Roman Republican official letters in Greek (PhD, Macquarie)
• Classical Remains and Christian Remembrance; Reviewing Late Roman Sarcophagi (PhD, Warwick)
• Roman archetypes: how Augustus used Roman mores and exempla to justify his leading role in Roman society (MA R, Birmingham)
• Damnatio memoriae and exemplarity in imperial Rome, from the Julio-Claudians to the Severans (PhD, Warwick)
• Theory and practice of adulatio in Seneca the Younger (PhD, Warwick)

I am keen to supervise postgraduate students who wish to study topics related to Latin epigraphy and Roman social, cultural, and political history from the late Republic to the second century AD. I would welcome the chance to work collaboratively with colleagues at Birmingham, Nottingham, and Leicester in supervising PhD students as part of the Midlands 4Cities consortium, and have complementary interests to Hannah Cornwell, Henriette van der Blom (Birmingham), Simon Malloch, Alex Mullen (Nottingham).

Professional associations

• British Epigraphy Society
• Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
• British School at Rome (Co-Editor PBSR; Faculty Member)
• Classical Association
• IDEA (International Digital Epigraphy Association, President)

Qualifications

• BA; MA; DPhil (St John's College, Oxford)