KIASH Inaugural Lecture – Thursday, 8 November 2012, 6:00 pm – Woolf Lecture Theatre
Professor Ray Laurence, ‘Pompeii, Roads and the Spatial Turn – was the Roman Empire an Early Form of Globalisation?’
The study of the Roman Empire has become a global phenomenon with radical research agendas in Brazil, new 3d TV programmes being made in Korea for a world market, and it continues to thrive in its European heartland. These are signs that the Roman Empire is becoming more relevant today. This lecture will set out a means to capture the nature of the Roman Empire seeking to relate the local, Pompeii, to the global, the Empire. The content will be drawn from Ray Laurence’s own experience of working on space with a focus on understanding how the spatial turn can allow Roman historians and archaeologists to create new explanations for a subject that has a longevity of scholarship back to at least the 18th century. In so doing, a question is posed to provide a focus for the lecture: Was the Roman Empire a form of globalisation?
Download lecture poster (pdf)