Power, Connectivity, and Inequality in the Ancient World

We have expertise in many different aspects of social, political and economic differentiation within the ancient world, as well as in geopolitics and colonialism.   

Bart Danon works on economic inequality in the Roman World. In his current book project, he explores the nexus between the wealth distribution and the political system of Roman imperial Italy. Another project focuses on the ubiquity of slavery in Roman Italy and its impact on social differentiation within society. A new project  focuses on regional urban systems. 

Jeremia Pelgrom is interested in the impact and organisation of ancient empires and specifically Roman Republican colonisation. Recently, he has been conducting a comparative study of colonisation practices in the Classical and Hellenistic period. Together with a group of ReMA students he is mapping and analysing the hundreds of colonial settlements founded in this period. The preliminary results of this research are published online. 

Onno van Nijf works  on the interactions between Rome and Greece, especially in the context of  athletic festivals, civic associations, and the reception of Roman populations in cities of Greece and Asia Minor.  He directs a project on Anchoring hegemony in Hellenistic Greece, funded by Anchoring Innovation. Since 2022 he has been a member of the international team of l’Année épigraphique, and responsible for the Roman province Asia.

Christina Williamson investigates religious connectivities via the angle of festivals, within the larger framework of how these festivals created a pan-Mediterranean network of common knowledge and shared values. 

Lidewijde de Jong investigates the dynamics of ancient empires and identity formation in West-Asia and the East-Mediterranean (c. 300 BCE – 1000 CE). Her excavation and survey projects have concentrated on the Hellenistic (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria), Roman (Lebanon, Syria), and Early Islamic periods (Syria). She collaborates on the excavation of Seleukeia Sidera, a Hellenistic-Late Roman town in southwest Turkey (Pisidia).