Studying the Past

This research strand brings together many of the more methodological areas of interest at the BSR, and also connects with the highly important area of reception studies. The theme of how the past was conceived, presented, rethought and repackaged is an important constant for work on antiquarianism. More methodological concerns are picked up by our interest in literature historiography, epigraphy, palaeography and the history of scholarship. The continuing significance of archaeological science is also reflected here.

The invention of disciplinary research, and the birth of modern science is directly addressed in the BSR’s project Rome and the World: A Laboratory for the Humanities from the Renaissance to the Grand Tour.

Award-Holders since 2008

From Renaissance to Grand Tour

David Chidgey (Melbourne): An Italian teacher of English language and culture in sixteenth-century England and Italy
Nicholas Temple (Lincoln/Huddersfield): Sir William Chambers’ Grand Tour: reconciling orientalism and classicism
Luciana Gallo: A new chapter in the history of the Elgin drawings: the missing Italian collection (September-December 2012)
Jonathan Yarker (Cambridge): Thomas Jenkins and the business of the Grand Tour in eighteenth-century Rome (April-June 2013)
Simon Macdonald (Cambridge): British communities in late eighteenth-century Italy
John Robertson (Oxford): Sacred history and enlightenment history: Rome and Naples 1650–1750
Ana Maria Suarez Huerta: Travels across Europe in the eighteenth century: the unique case of Spain
William Eisler (Musée monetaire cantonal, Lausanne): The medals of Martin Folkes: art, Newtonian science and Masonic sociability in the age of the Grand Tour

Literature, Historiography, epigraphy, palaeography

Costas Panayotakis (Glasgow): Roman drama in fragments: Atellane comedy and the sententiae attributed to Publilius
Luke Houghton (Glasgow): Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue: a cultural history
Stephen Heyworth (Oxford): A commentary on Ovid, Fasti 3
Michelle Borg (Sydney): Pliny the Younger and senatorial opposition to Domitian
Richard Pollard (Cambridge): 1. An edition and commentary for the seventh-century papal letters; 2. A study and edition of ninth-century Nonantola’s manuscript annotations
Simon Williams (Liverpool): The writing and reception of history in the tenth century: an investigation of Liudprand of Cremona’s Antapodosis
David Rundle (Oxford):The English hand in Rome: barbarous Britons and the Renaissance arts of the humanist book, 1400–1520
Jaspreet Boparai (Cambridge): Politian’s Hellenism: reading, writing, teaching and studying Greek at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Florentine studio, 1469-94
Oren Margolis (Oesterreichisches Nationalbibliothek): The hyper-literate: humanists and diplomats in Renaissance Europe
Anita Sganzerla (Courtauld): Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and the ‘Republic of Letters’ in Seventeenth-century Rome
Carrie Churnside (Birmingham): The seventeenth-century sacred cantata in the papal states
Ann Liebeck (Oxford): Anna de Amicis, Antonia Bernasconi, Lucrezia Agujari and Caterina Gabrielli, their influence on changing vocal technique in works for soprano by Mozart, through the operas of Jommelli, Traetta and the Neapolitan School
Allison Goudie (Oxford): Canova and caricature: strategies for viewing portraiture in the Napoleonic era

Archaeological Science

Robyn Veal (Sydney): Forest exploitation and sustainability in central Italy and provincial Britain in the Roman Imperial period
Jane Draycott (Nottingham): The gardens of Hygieia: the role of the Roman hortus in domestic medical practice
Laura Banducci (Michigan): Foodways and cultural identity in Republican Italy: the coastal cities of Paestum and Populonia
Victoria Leitch (Oxford): Roman North African cookwares in the Mediterranean: production, diffusion and typological reference

Selected Publications since 2008

Alison COOLEY (Rome Award 1996–7) The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy (Cambridge University Press 2011).
Jane DRAYCOTT (Rome Fellow 2011–12) Approaches to Healing in Roman Egypt (British Archaeological Reports, International Series, 2012).
Catherine FLETCHER (Rome Fellow 2009-10) Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador (Bodley Head, 2012).
Ian CAMPBELL (Rome Scholar 1980–81) with Robert W. Gaston: Pirro Ligorio and two columna caelata drawings at Windsor Castle. Papers of the British School at Rome 78 (2010): 265–88.
Ian CAMPBELL (Rome Scholar 1980–1) The ‘Minerva Medica’ and the Schola Medicorum: Pirro Ligorio and Roman toponymy. Papers of the British School at Rome 79 (2011): 299–328.
Susan RUSSELL (Assistant Director, 2003-2010), ‘Girolamo Mercuriale’s De Arte Gymnastica and Papal health at the Villa Pamphilj, Rome’, in A. Arcangeli & V. Nutton (eds), Girolamo Mercuriale. Medicina e cultura nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Atti del Convegno ‘Girolamo Mercuriale e lo spazio scientifico e culturale del Cinquecento’, (Forlì, 8-11 novembre 2006), N. 10, Bibliothèque d’Histoire des Sciences, Florence, Leo. J. Olskchi, pp. 163-177.
Susan RUSSELL (Assistant Director, 2003-2010), ‘Salvator Rosa and Herman van Swanevelt’ in Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) e il suo tempo, 1615-1673, (eds) Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Caterina Volpi and Helen Langdon,