prof. dr. B.L. (Bettina) Reitz-Joosse

I studied Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (BA 2007, MSt 2008) and I hold a PhD (2013) from Leiden University. After postdoctoral fellowships at Leiden, the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome (KNIR), and the University of Pennsylvania, I joined the Groningen department in 2015. In 2024, I was appointed to the Aletta Jacobs Chair of Latin Literature and Culture. From 2018 tot 2023, I served as a member of De Jonge Akademie of the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. I am the current chair of the Groningen institute CRASIS for the study of the ancient world.

My research focusses on the relationship between literature and material culture in the Roman world, and specifically on processes of manual creation and their cultural representations in ancient Rome. My monograph Building in Words: The Process of Construction in Latin Literature was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. In September 2023, I began work on my ERC-funded project FACERE: Roman Making and its Meanings . With a team of researchers, we analyse literary and artistic representations of manual production processes in order to further our understanding of the aesthetics and ethics of 'making' in ancient Rome.

I also work on ancient literary landscapes: in 2015, I was awarded a research grant (NWO-Veni) for a project which deals with the representation of ‘landscapes of war’ (battlefields and other post-war spaces) in Roman literature, and an edited volume related to this project was published in 2021.

Finally, I publish in the area of classical reception studies, particularly on the politics of the Latin language in 20th and 21st century Europe. Together with my colleague Han Lamers (Oslo), I direct a project which deals with the role of the Latin language in Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany.

I usually teach a range of courses in our BA and MA programmes, as well as an Honours College course on War Remembrance in Ancient Rome. In the academic year 2024-25, my courses include an MA seminar on Ecocriticism and Classical Literature and the BA seminar Classics: A Problematic Heritage in the 21st Century. I also collaborate with students on research projects, including the Fascist Latin project and a project on the Classical heritage in Groningen. In April 2018, I was elected Lecturer of the Year of the University of Groningen.