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, from the Hellenistic period onwards, whilst our recent appointment of Michael Scott now extends this expertise into the world of Classical Greece as well.

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

Postgraduate training

The department has a Taught MA programme [Ancient Visual and Material Culture], including a stream incorporating the Postgraduate City of Rome course at the BSR [Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome], 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

  • Dr 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). She was one of the team producing the last two quinquennial surveys of Roman inscriptions in Journal of Roman Studies (2007, 2012), and has just joined the team of Annee Epigraphique, to write annual reports on epigraphic finds in Roman Britain. Recent articles include ‘History and Inscriptions, Rome’ in The Oxford History of Historical Writing vol. I (2011); 'Commemorating the war-dead of the Roman world' in Cultures of Commemoration (2012); 'From document to monument: inscribing Roman official documents in the Greek East' in Epigraphy and the Historical Sciences. Her paper 'Women beyond Rome: trend-setters or dedicated followers of fashion?' will be published in 2013 in a volume edited by Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf, following the colloquium 'Gender and the Roman City' held in Amsterdam in 2011; another paper, ‘Writing up the baths: reading monumental inscriptions in Roman baths’, will also appear in the volume Written Space in the Latin West: 100 BC to AD 300, eds R. Laurence and G. Sears (Continuum 2013). She has recently become interested in paratextual approaches to epigraphy, and has a forthcoming chapter on the Senatus consultum de Pisone patre in L. Jansen, ed., Roman Paratext (CUP 2013), and is preparing a lecture on the Res Gestae to be given in Paris in June 2013. Other conference papers will include 'The invention of the age of Augustus' (Cambridge Sept 2013), 'Multiple meanings in the sanctuary of the Magna Mater at Ostia' (Eisenach Oct 2013), and 'The last days of Augustus' (Leeds 2014). 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: a sourcebook (Routledge 2004), followed by a second edition (2013), Pompeii and Herculaneum: a sourcebook, and she is contributing articles to the ABC CLIO Encyclopedia of Conflict in Greece and Rome. She is now working on editing Inventive Inscriptions, based upon the two-day international colloquium held at Warwick in May 2012, to be published as a supplement to the Journal of the History of Collections, and is finalising the typescript of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Roman Italy.
  • Dr Abigail Graham - studies the epigraphy of the Greek East, focusing especially on Ephesos and Aphrodisias.
  • Dr Fabienne Marchand - specialises in Greek epigraphy, and is particularly interested in Central Greece (Boiotia). Her doctoral thesis consisted of the edition of over 1,400 inscriptions from Tanagra. She co-edited in 2010 a 700-page volume entitled Onomatologos devoted to personal names, most of all extracted from Greek and Latin inscriptions. She is also involved in the forthcoming volume of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Caria to Cilicia, OUP 2013). She is now involved in the Thespiai and Koroneia Surveys (Profs. J. Bintliff and A. Snodgrass) and collaborates in an international project which aims to replace Inscriptiones Graecae VII.
  • Dr 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.
  • Dr Daniel Orrells - specialises in reception studies, including attitudes and approaches to epigraphy in the 19th century. He has also published on Winckelmann's art history and Freud's interest in archaeology. His next project will be an examination of the illustrations of eighteenth-century editions of Winckelmann's "Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums".
  • Dr 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).

Epigraphic events

Classical Association 2013 - Warwick Epigraphy Panel

Performance, Presence, and Memory: Inscriptions and Public Spaces, organised by Ersin Hussein: University of Reading, 3-6 April 2013

  • Ersin Hussein and Massimo Raffa, University of Warwick 'Honorific Self Display: A Musical Note from Roman Cyprus'

  • Dr Abigail Graham, University of Warwick 'Setting the stage: looking at the use of dramatic space/ architecture and its role in the arrangement of an inscription (a case study from Ephesos).
  • Dr Fabienne Marchand, University of Warwick 'Reshaping public and sacred space: reinscribing monuments in Hellenistic Boiotia'
  • Ghislaine van der Ploeg, University of Warwick 'Sacred Laws in the Cult of Asclepius'

Please contact Ersin Hussein for further details.

Current research projects and collaborative work

  • New research project - 'Facilitating Access to Latin inscriptions in Britain's Oldest Public Museum through Scholarship and Technology', AHRC Research Grant, Oct 2013-Sep 2016. A collaborative project between the Dept of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick (led by Dr Alison Cooley as Principal Investigator), the Ashmolean Museum (Co-Investigator Dr Susan Walker) and the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, University of Oxford (Co-Investigator, Dr Charles Crowther).
  • Alison Cooley has just joined the team of Année Epigraphique, and will be preparing the annual survey of the epigraphy for the province of Britannia from 2013. She would be delighted to receive offprints/ information about relevant publications.

Alison Cooley is also joint series editor, with Prof. A.K. Bowman, of Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents (Oxford University Press). The series includes the following 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' will appear 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).

Fabienne Marchand works mainly on the Epigraphy of the region of Boiotia. In collaboration with Prof. A. Schachter she publishes the inscriptions found during the Thespiai and Koroneia Surveys (Profs. J. Bintliff and A. Snodgrass). Six new inscriptions of the Thespiai Survey were published in December 2012 in a volume stemming from presentations at the Oxford Epigraphy Workshop entitled Epigraphical Approaches to the Study of the Postclassical Polis. Fourth Century BC to Second Century AD edited by P. Martzavou and N. Papazarkadas at OUP. Fabienne Marchand also collaborates with the Copenhagen Associations project, and is notably involved in the compilation of their inventory and database of private associations of the Greek-speaking world, largely based on epigraphical evidence, as consultant for the region of Boiotia.

Recent publications in epigraphy

  • Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World (eds, Zahra Newby & Ruth Leader-Newby), published by CUP in 2007, is the result of conference panels held at the APA/AIA conference in New Orleans and the Classical Association Conference at Warwick, both in 2003. It presents a series of papers interrogating the interaction of inscriptions and images on monuments and art-works from Archaic Greece to late Antiquity.
  • ‘Roman Inscriptions 2001-2005’ (A.E. Cooley, S. Mitchell and B. Salway) appeared in JRS 97 (2007) pp.176-262
  • The Res Gestae divi Augusti was rightly dubbed ‘queen of inscriptions’ by Theodore Mommsen. A substantial new commentary on the inscription by Alison Cooley was published by CUP in May 2009. Listen to our podcast, 'The first emperor and the queen of inscriptions: Augustus in his own words'. The translation into English of the RGDA was included in a Turkish/English version in S. Mitchell, The Imperial Temple at Ankara and The Res Gestae of the Emperor Augustus, A Historical Guide (Turkish-English, 2008) and in K. Gorkay, S. Mitchell, M. Kadioglu, Roman Ancyra.
  • ‘The Philippeis of IG VII 2433’ (Fabienne Marchand), in R.W.V. Catling, F. Marchand (eds), Onomatologos. Studies in Greek Personal Names presented to Elaine Matthews. Oxford (2010), p. 332–343
  • Delphi and Olympia: the spatial politics of panhellenism in the archaic and classical periods (Michael Scott) (Cambridge, 2010)
  • 'History and inscriptions, Rome' (A.E. Cooley), in The Oxford History of Historical Writing vol 1, eds A. Feldherr and G. Hardy (OUP, 2011) 244-64
  • ‘A new profession in a funerary inscription from Tanagra’ (Fabienne Marchand), Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 178 (2011), p. 207-209
  • Displaying lists of what is (not) on display: the uses of inventories in Greek sanctuaries' (Michael Scott) in M. Haysom and J. Wallensten (eds.), Current Approaches to Greek Religion (Athens, 2011) 239-52
  • ‘Commemorating the war dead of the Roman world’ (A.E. Cooley) in Cultures of Commemoration. War memorials, ancient and modern, (eds) P. Low, G.J. Oliver, P.J. Rhodes (Proceedings of the British Academy 160/ Oxford University Press, 2012) 61-86
  • ‘From document to monument: inscribing Roman official documents in the Greek East’ (A.E. Cooley), in J.K. Davies and J. Wilkes, eds, Epigraphy and the Historical Sciences (Proceedings of the British Academy 177/ Oxford University Press, 2012) 159-82
  • The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy by Alison Cooley (CUP, 2012) has two main aims. Firstly, to enable readers to appreciate both the potential and the limitations of inscriptions as historical source material, by considering in detail the diversity of epigraphic culture in the Roman world, and how this has been transmitted to the 21st century. Secondly, to provide students with guidance for deciphering inscriptions in their raw state and handling specialist epigraphic publications. This work has been completed thanks to a research leave grant from the AHRC in 2010.
  • ‘Fresh light on the institutions and religious life of Thespiai: six new inscriptions from the Thespiai Survey’ (A. Schachter, F. Marchand), in P. Martzavou, N. Papazarkadas (eds), Epigraphical Approaches to the Study of the Postclassical Polis. Fourth Century BC to Second Century AD. Oxford (OUP, 2012), p. 277-299.
  • 'Roman inscriptions 2006-2010' (Alison Cooley/ Benet Salway) - Journal of Roman Studies (2012)
Publications in press
  • Space and Society in the Greek and Roman worlds (M. Scott) - to be published by CUP in November 2012 - demonstrates the usefulness of spatial analysis by examining how spatial approaches to literary, material and epigraphic evidence can improve our understanding of a range of physical and metaphorical spaces across the Greek and Roman worlds.
  • 'Women beyond Rome: trend-setters or dedicated followers of fashion?' (Alison Cooley) will be published in 2013 in a volume (to be published by Brill) edited by Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf, following the colloquium 'Gender and the Roman City', held in Amsterdam in 2011.
  • 'The Statilii Tauri and the Cult of the Theos Tauros at Thespiai' (Fabienne Marchand), in N. Papazarkadas (ed.), The Epigraphy and History of Boeotia: New Finds, New Developments. Leiden: Brill (2013)
  • ‘Writing up the baths: reading monumental inscriptions in Roman baths’, (Alison Cooley) in Written Space in the Latin West: 100 BC to AD 300, eds R. Laurence and G. Sears (Continuum, 2013)

Current postgraduates

  • Ersin Hussein (PhD): Roman Cyprus [poster presented at British Epigraphy Society in Nov. 2011, on the Ummidii of Cyprus]
  • Ghislaine van der Ploeg (MPhil/PhD): Cult of Asclepius [poster presented at British Epigraphy Society in Nov. 2012, on The Emperor as Hiketes: Imperial Worship of Asclepius]
  • Alexander Peck (MPhil/PhD): Concepts of patria
  • Joanna Kemp (MA by Research): Augustan ideologies
  • Jessica Walker (MA by Research): The Development of the Principate under the Julio-Claudians
  • Charis Tyndall (Taught MA)
  • Miriam Hay (Taught MA)

Departmental bursaries and university scholarships are available for research postgraduates.