Dr Joy Bithell, Co-Chair
As an independent classicist based in Oxford, Joy publishes under the name of R. Joy Littlewood. Her early work on Ovid and interest in Roman religion led to a commentary on Ovid, Fasti 6 (Oxford University Press, 2006). Recent work on Flavian epic includes commentaries on Silius Italicus’ Punica 7 (Oxford 2011), Punica 10 (Oxford 2017) and Punica 3 (Oxford 2022), in collaboration with Prof. Antony Augoustakis (Illinois) with whom she has co-edited Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination (Oxford 2019). She currently serves on the editorial board for Oxford Commentaries on Flavian Poetry. She has recently completed the fourth and fifth volumes of Professor J.C. McKeown’s commentaries on Ovid’s Amores for Arca Classical Texts (2022) and (forthcoming 2024).
Ms Kate Starling, Co-Chair
Kate Starling worked at the Museum of London until her retirement, where she had been responsible for leading teams developing new galleries and educational, access and collections programmes. Prior to that she was an archaeological conservator, studying and training at the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham, and gaining experience at Norwich Castle Museum and what is now English Heritage before joining the Museum of London. She has long experience of Roman, as well as prehistoric and medieval, sites and objects in the UK and it is now with great pleasure that she is able to expand her horizons to include the wonderful sites in Italy. She has been a member of the Board since 2015 and is responsible for helping develop and organise the biennial Congresses in Herculaneum.
Ms Alison Allden
Alison Allden currently is a non-executive director/trustee on a number of boards, largely in the higher education sector. She has previously been Chief Executive of the Higher Education Statistics Agency and a member of the senior executive group at Bristol University. Prior to that she was an IT professional, for example Director of IT at Warwick University and at the National Maritime Museum. She worked at the British Museum on a major project to create a computerised record of all the objects and their documentation held by the Museum. She began her career as a professional archaeologist working for 10 years in a number of positions across England. This was after a degree studying archaeology and classics at Bristol University and a post graduate field archaeology course based at Oxford University. While at University she worked one summer at Herculaneum on a number of conservation projects, living at the Villa Maiuri. She has been a member of the Friends of Herculaneum for over 15 years.
Prof. Antony Augoustakis
Antony is Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Associate Dean of the Humanities and Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is author of many academic papers and several books on Latin literature, especially in the area of Flavian epic poetry, included many edited volumes, most recently Silius Italicus, Punica 3(with R.J. Littlewood; Oxford, 2022) and Silius Italicus and the Tradition of the Roman Historical Epos(with M. Fucechi; Leiden, 2022). Antony has organized many international conferences in the USA and Europe, especially Italy, including leading study abroad programs for American students in Italy. He has also served on committees and leadership positions for Classics societies in the USA (CAMWS, SCS).
Ms Kay Byers
Kay Byers works as a Company Secretary/FO in an Architectural Practice with specific responsibility for Corporate Governance, Diversity (especially gender) and Inclusion. She is also a Mentor for Women in Property. She is a self-described late starter in Classics, taking a degree in Classics in 2006 (i.e. in her forties) and subsequently a Masters degree at UCL in her fifties. Currently she is researching gendered perceptions in Seneca with affiliation to UWTSD, Lampeter. She has had a life-long interest in Herculaneum and Pompeii and is keen to facilitate further research and investigation of the sites.
Prof. Annalisa Marzano
Annalisa Marzano is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Bologna, and former Professor of Ancient History at the University of Reading, UK. After degrees in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Florence and Columbia University, New York, she worked as a researcher for the Oxford Roman Economy Project and was Golding Fellow at Brasenose College. She is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society, a Member of the Academia Europaea, and Corresponding Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. Her publications include the monographs Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History (2007), Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean (2013), Plants Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (2022), and the edited volume (with G. Métraux) The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin: Late Republic to Late Antiquity (2018).
Dr Federica Nicolardi
Federica Nicolardi is Associate Professor of Papyrology at the University of Naples Federico II and a member of the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi ‘M. Gigante’. Her research centers on the Herculaneum papyri, with a focus on critical editions and virtual restoration techniques. She actively contributes to the creation of a digital tool for virtual reconstruction of papyrus rolls (Maque-IT), collaborates on imaging the opened Herculaneum papyri (B. Seales’ ‘Digital Restoration of Herculaneum Papyri’ project), and serves as the lead papyrologist for the Vesuvius Challenge. She is the Corresponding PI of the ERC Synergy 2024 project UnLost.
Prof. Tobias Reinhardt
Tobias Reinhardt is the Corpus Christi Professor of the Latin Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. He obtained his first degree in Frankfurt before coming to Oxford for his doctorate. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, and a tutorial fellowship at Somerville College, he was appointed to the Chair of Latin in 2008. He is author of many academic papers and several books on Latin literature and philosophy, most recently a critical edition of and commentary on Cicero’s so-called Academica (both Oxford 2023). He was also a co-director of a major research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council on digitising the Herculaneum papyri and other cultural artefacts.
Ms Samantha Rowley
As Heritage and Education Manager at the Colchester Archaeological Trust, Samantha directs educational programmes, curates lecture series, organises special events, and conducts research on Roman chariot racing and arena architecture. A qualified tour guide, tutor, and youth mentor, Samantha is passionate about the Classical world and is dedicated to sharing knowledge and fostering public engagement with archaeology and ancient history.
Samantha Rowley earned a First-Class BA (Hons) in Classical Studies from the Open University before completing a Master of Arts in the same field, where her dissertation, Primacy of the Rose in Roman Funerary Contexts: Rosalia, Sarcophagi Decoration, and Columbaria Garlands, received Merit. She also holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Tutoring and Coaching from The University of Worcester, and a Specialist Diploma in Education and Teaching from Middlesex University.
An independent scholar in Roman funerary archaeology, Samantha continues to develop her research on the rose as a symbol of ritual and remembrance in Roman Britain and Italy, with particular attention to its sensory, iconographic, and religious dimensions. She attends conferences and symposia across Britain and Europe, and visits Roman sites worldwide to engage with current scholarship and material culture.
Dr Jess Venner
Dr Jess Venner is an ancient Roman historian, archaeologist and author whose work examines early Imperial horticulture, urbanism, identity and resilience in the Roman world, with a particular focus on Pompeii. She is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Oxford and holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, funded by the AHRC Midlands3Cities DTP. She has held a Research Associateship at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, was the recipient of the Rome Award at the British School at Rome, and is an elected Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She currently serves as Editor of Vesuvian sites for the international Gardens of the Roman Empire project, the first online corpus of Roman gardens. She reaches millions of history lovers monthly via her social media channel @lifeinthepastlane_ and her trade book, The Lost Voices of Pompeii, is forthcoming in 2026 (HarperCollins; UK, Commonwealth, N. America and Japan).
Mr Nigel Wilson
Nigel Wilson is Fellow and Tutor in Classics (Emeritus) of Lincoln College, Oxford, and one of the founding members of the Society. He has published the editions of Sophocles (with Hugh Lloyd-Jones), Aristophanes and Herodotus in the series of Oxford Classical Texts (1990, 2007 and 2015 respectively) and authored other publications in the fields of Greek palaeography, textual criticism and the history of classical scholarship. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
President
Prof. Robert L. Fowler
Honorary President Robert L. Fowler was educated at Toronto (MA 1977) and Oxford (DPhil 1980). After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary he joined the staff at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, where he taught from 1981-1996. From 1996 until his retirement in 2017 he was Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol. He served as a Trustee of the Society from 2004-2025. His publications include The Nature of Early Greek Lyric (1987), The Cambridge Companion to Homer (ed., 2004), Early Greek Mythography (2 vols, 2000-2013), Pindar and the Sublime (2022), and numerous articles. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.