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We are particularly interested in communication across various media (public speech, literary texts, visual representations, coins and monumental inscriptions), which show the impact of persuasive strategies on the immediate and longer-term recipients, including the modern reception of the ancient world. Our reception specialists focus on projects which significantly develop our understanding of the ancient world through its later reception.

Researchers

• Henriette van der Blom is a specialist in Roman oratory and rhetoric across the republican and imperial periods, and the founding director of the Network for Oratory and Politics.
• Leslie Brubaker has a particular interest in the rhetorical relationship between text and image, and the ways in which gender is communicated in the Byzantine period.
• Philip Burton works on the development of Christian Latin discourse and how modern novelists, poets, translators, and others have reinvented the ancient world.
• Hannah Cornwell focuses on the communicative aspects of peace, diplomacy and negotiations in the Roman world.
• Theodora Hadjimichael is an expert on the reception of Greek Lyric poetry in antiquity, focussing in particular in the complex processes which led to the development of a canon and on its philosophical reception.
• Gideon Nisbet is an expert in ancient epigrams and in classical reception in nineteenth century literature, in modern translations and in popular culture.
• Leire Olabarria works on the reception of ancient Egypt in some aspects of popular culture, such as heavy metal music and science fiction literature.
• Diana Spencer is particularly interested in language and etymology as expressions of and influences on experience and memory.
• Elena Theodorakopoulos works on poetic communication in the Roman republic and principate and the reception of classical culture and literature in modern film and literature.

Major publications

• van der Blom, H 2021, . in TA Hass & R Raja (eds), Caesar's Past and Posterity's Caesar. , pp. 95-110. 
• van der Blom, H 2024, . in C Rosillo-López & S Lacorte (eds), Cives Romanae: Roman Women as Citizens during the Republic. Libera Res Publica, no. 12, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, pp. 179-204.
• van der Blom, H 2020, . in F Pina Polo (ed.), The Triumviral Period: Civil War, Political Crisis and Socioeconomic Transformations. Libera Res Publica, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, pp. 249-79.
• van der Blom, H 2017, . Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome.Sandberg, K. & Smith, C. (eds.). Leiden: Brill, p. 234-56 (Historiography of Rome and its Empire; vol. 2).
• van der Blom, H 2016, . Autorretratos: la creación de la imagen personal en la antigüedad.Marco Simón, F., Pina Polo, F. & Remesal Rodríguez, J. (eds.). Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, p. 87-99
• van der Blom, H 2016, . Cambridge University Press.
• Brubaker, L 2019, . in T Arentzen & M Cunningham (eds), The reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian narratives in texts and images.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 120-148.
• Burton, P 2017, . Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Burton, P 2015, . in A Gibson (ed.), Robert Graves and the classical tradition. Classical presences, Oxford University Press.
• Cornwell, H2020, . Coins of the Roman revolution (49BC-AD14): evidence without hindsight. Burnett, A. & Powell, A. (eds.). Classical Press of Wales, pp. 123-144.
• Cornwell, H 2017, . Oxford Classical Monographs, Oxford University Press.
• Cornwell, H 2015, . The Journal of Roman Studies. 105, pp. 41-72.
• Hadjimichael, T 2019, . Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Hadjimichael, T 2019, . in B Currie & I Rutherford (eds), The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry 600BC-400AD : Transmission, Canonization, and Paratext. Brill, Leiden, pp. 151-81.
• Nisbet, G 2020, . The World's Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Nisbet, G 2015, . Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Nisbet, G 2018, . in S Murnaghan & RM Rosen (eds), Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition. , pp. 184-209. 
• Olabarria, L 2019, . in K Fletcher & O Umurhan (eds), Classical antiquity in heavy metal music. 1 edn, Bloomsbury.
• Spencer, D 2019, . Wisconsin Studies in Classics, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
• Theodorakopoulos, E & Cox, F (eds) 2018, . Classical Presences, Oxford University Press.
• Theodorakopoulos, E 2019, '', Synthesis, vol. 12 (2019).

Projects

• Network for Oratory and Politics (led by Henriette van der Blom). This network has housed the Crisis of Rhetoric project (led by Henriette van der Blom and funded by the AHRC) and Speech! Speech!.
• Spaces for Diplomacy in the Roman World (led by Hannah Cornwell, funded by Leverhulme).