The proliferation of TV fiction can be partly explained by TV producers attuning their products to draw audience’s attention. Narratives of love dominate the plots and almost always the good is pitted against the evil, rich against the poor – ultimately the good always wins. The formula may be clichéd, but in places where news of war, te…[Read more]

These slides accompany my talk ‘The Fragility of Democracy’, presented at the Faculty of Classics, Oxford Open Day, 27th June 2018, and also at other venues and events.

An essay on the Greeks in Egypt during the Archaic and Classical periods.

The resemblance between the Gospel story about Jesus stilling a storm in the Sea of Galilee (Mt. 8:18, 23-27, Mk. 4:35-41, Lk. 8:22-25) and the Jonah story (Jon. 1:1-16) has been long acknowledged by scholars. This article contends that since the relations between the two stories are those of polar opposition, it should be possible, by way of…[Read more]

This paper assesses the evidence for the collapse or otherwise of the northern frontier of Britannia, including Hadrian’s Wall, relative to received paradigms of ‘the end’ of Roman Britain.

This paper examines structural changes to stone-built granaries at fort sites along Hadrian’s Wall, with particular attention given to the latest phases of alterations that indicate a demolition or changed use of granary buildings.

Review of Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos (ed.), Panhellenes at Methone: graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone.
Trends in classics – supplementary volumes, 44 .

During most of Antiquity, the Greek-speaking kingdoms in Cyprus used syllabic writing systems for the Cypriot dialect. Paphos, which was one of the most powerful kingdoms in the island, used a special variant of the Cypriot syllabary. Although the circumstances seemed to favour the adoption of the Greek alphabet as a writing system, the Paphians…[Read more]

The ruins of church-mosques, museums, and ancient cities inform material culture as allegories inform spiritual life, invoking transcendence amidst desacralization. Drawing on Benjamin, Jameson, and Koselleck to advance our understanding of the functioning of ruins across time, this ethnography of ruins engages with the paradoxes generated by…[Read more]

Aristotle’s account of kingship in Politics 3 responds to the rich discourse on kingship that permeates Greek political thought (notably in the works of Herodotus, Xenophon and Isocrates), in which the king is the paradigm of virtue, and also the instantiator and guarantor of order, linking the political microcosm to the macrocosm of the u…[Read more]

The process of managing information in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) design projects remained relatively unchanged between publication of works of Bavarian theorist Albrecht Dürer and French mathematician Gaspard Monge in the 1500s and 1700s respectively, and the widespread adoption of computer aided design (CAD) in the early…[Read more]

This course explores the art, archaeology, and culture of the Greek world from the prehistory to the Roman period. The course focuses on architecture, sculpture, painted pottery, and wall painting as its main object classes and situates artistic and stylistic developments within their social, political, and historical context. We will consider…[Read more]

This first-year seminar provides an introduction to the archaeology and urban development of the city of Rome from antiquity through to the present day. Students will survey the period from the foundation of the city through to the twenty-first century with an eye toward understanding the urbanism and material culture of the city of Rome. Case…[Read more]

This provocation contests the familiar construction of classical Athens as an ideal exemplar of democratic politics through a focus on the city’s material fabric, its visual artworks, and the performances which took place within its public spaces. It highlights the city’s ongoing process of material re-building (particularly following the Per…[Read more]

This study tells the story of Architectural Forum magazine during the Time Inc. ownership period, 1932-64. Why and how did this episode in American discursive life come about? What were its failures and successes, lessons, potential legacy? In answering these questions, the author describes the unusual building industry-wide sense of community…[Read more]

This paper studies the creation, circulation, and reception of two groups of photographs of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House, both taken by Hedrich Blessing. The first set, produced for a 1951 Architectural Forum magazine cover story, features curtains carefully arranged according to the architect’s preferences; the Museum of…[Read more]

The inter-allied memorial commemorates the First World War and the fallen, as well as the wartime cooperation between the Allies. Its inter-allied character and its scale make this memorial one of a kind.

Book review of The Republican Aventine and Rome’s Social Order, by Lisa Marie Mignone , 2016. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press; ISBN 978-0-472-11988-2 hardback $70.00; 264pp., 12 figures, 2 tables

This chapter examines the underpinnings of Roman architecture by exploring some critical issues related to the architecture of central Italy primarily during the first half of the first millennium BCE. Four categories of buildings are considered, namely domestic architecture, civic architecture, defensive architecture, and sacred architecture. It…[Read more]

Book review of Ancient Samnium. Settlement, Culture, and Identity between History and Archaeology
By Rafael Scopacasa. Pp. xvi + 352, figs. b&w 22, tables 12. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015. £75, $125. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-871376-0.