I am an ancient historian - currently Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford and Hanseatic Visiting Scholar at the University of Tübingen - working on the economic history of the pre-modern Mediterranean area, with a core focus of specialty in the urban economies of Roman Anatolia. I am also interested in social history, material culture studies, gender studies, the history of historiography, and the political reuse of classical antiquity in the 20th and 21st centuries.
My DPhil dissertation investigates female economic agency in the Graeco-Roman cities of Asia. By looking at social, economic, political, and cultural backgrounds as well as the impact on the social fabric of the civic communities, it furthers our understanding of the phenomena of women benefactresses, office-holders, and fund-managers. I am engaging not only with the specific roles of women in economic contexts, but also with the modern discourse on the ancient societal construction of gender roles, showing that a certain reading of this construction has in the past been misinformed by a one-sided focus on literary sources and by modern readings of female agency still approached by a male-dominated view of history.
