Skip to Content
  1. BIPs
  2. Detail

This BIP develops and continues from Roman Mobilities: the Movement of Persons, Animals, Objects and Ideas in the Ancient Roman World, successfully hosted by Sapienza (2023) and Bucharest (2024). The programme offers an advanced undergraduate and postgraduate seminar on ancient Roman culture through the lens of  “mobility”.

The developments of Roman culture as it moved across Europe demand multidisciplinary reflection on research questions relating to identity, the relationship between contemporary culture and local histories, and the different approaches to the past demanded by varied source materials. The added dimension for 2025 responds to the context of Scotland: a country beyond the borders of the empire, but which nevertheless has a rich and diverse history of reworking and absorbing the traces of Roman history and culture, both material and imaginary.

Central to this programme is the investigation of Rome – the city at the centre of a European empire – through its encounters with the East, the West, and the North, and of the interaction between the centre of empire and its extremities: today’s Romania, Spain, Morocco, Britain, all countries represented in the teaching team. The investigation emphasises the ambivalent processes of cultural appropriation, exchange, and dominance in the self-definition of communities under Roman rule, as Rome confronted a wide range of cultures: Greeks, other ancient Mediterranean and Black Sea communities, including those in North Africa, Spain, Gaul, Briton, as well as diasporic Jews. 

At the heart of this programme is the desire to provide a space for critical thinking to an array of students from different countries and backgrounds and to generate an ongoing debate about the timeliness of studying ancient cultural discourses in the present moment. By focusing on the extremely mobile nature of ancient Rome in terms of space and time, we will question traditional claims about the legacy of Roman imperialism in the creation of European values and propose more innovative methods for exploring this dialectic from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, always counting on the added value of our Alliance’s goals regarding issues of multiculturalism and civic approach.

The physical mobility part is scheduled between 16-20 June 2025 in Glasgow, and will include excursions to archaeological sites and museums in the area and in the North of England.

The remains of the Roman presence in this area represent a unique resource for considering the core themes of international mobility from a historical perspective. Equally unique is the dimension of heritage management and cultural reception of antiquity. The integration and restoration of these monuments, and their place in the physical landscape, raise multi-layered questions about the heritage management, and the cultural reception of the Roman past which will give a special educational value to these site visits. The remains of the Roman border, the history of its preservation and reconstruction, and the associated material remains of the Northern frontier, will present students with a challenging and little-explored set of research questions about national identity, empire-building, and the preservation and appropriation of material remains.

There will be  object handling sessions at the Hunterian Museum, an excursion from Glasgow to view the surviving remains of the Antonine Wall, and a longer spent visiting Hadrian's wall and sites associated with it, including Vindolanda, Arbeia, Broccolitia, Housesteads.

*We will endeavour to make the course as accessible as possible, therefore it is possible to complete the assessment without participating in the mobility element if personal circumstances make that difficult, by completing an equivalent individual research project.

The program includes 10 online meetings spread between 7 February - 6 June 2025:

07.02.2025

  • Course introduction, and 'meet and greet', hosted by Matthew and Adrastos (Glasgow)
  • Matthew Fox (University of Glasgow): Mobility, Nation, and Culture: Greek education in Rome

14.02.2025

  • Sabine Luciani (Aix-Marseille Université): Rome’s relationship to Greece through the case of Philosophy
  • Luis Unceta Gómez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): Mobility in Latin

21.02.2025 

  • Zoa Alonso Fernández (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): The moving body and Roman dance. A study on performativity
  • Giorgio Ferri (Sapienza Università di Roma): Ritual movements of persons and animals in Roman Religion

28.02.2025

  • Florica Mihuț (University of Bucharest): Exile, social mobility, and the exclusion from the citizen body in ancient Rome
  • Pedro Duarte (Aix-Marseille Université): Mobility and language contacts through the Roman Empire in the 1st century CE

07.03.2025

  • Alexandra Lițu (University of Bucharest): Religious practices and mobility on the edges of the Empire
  • Katell Berthelot (Aix-Marseille Université): Jewish mobilities in the Roman Empire

14.03.2025  

  • Valentin Bottez (University of Bucharest): Mithra?
  • Adrastos Omissi (Glasgow): The Romans in Britain

21.03.2025

  • Javier Moralejo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): The mobility of the Roman army through the Western Empire
  • Sanaa Hassab (University Hassan II Casablanca): Patrimonies and the strategy of creating heritage: concepts and limits of application

28.03.2025

  • student workshop 1 (2h) - concluding discussion, debate and synthesis

11.04.2025

  • student Workshop 2 (2h) - planning of the team projects

06.06.2025

  • meeting to consolidate preparations for the mobility element of the course
  • students meet tutors in groups to share progress on research topics
 Delve into the Roman Empire with this multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of mobility.