Professor Elizabeth Wueste, PhD (Program Director)
Professor. Dr. Elizabeth Wueste (pronounced West-ee) joined AUR in 2018 as Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Classics. She is a classical archaeologist whose research focuses on Roman art, archaeology, and socio-cultural history. Before AUR, she was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio (2016-2018).
Professor Wueste is interested in questions of the projection of power, self-identification, and self-representation as expressed in the record of material evidence, especially within Late Antiquity and Early Christianity. Her current research on Late Antique honorific monuments explores the ways in which conspicuous public display contributes to an ongoing conversation with the audience to shape and project social image and identity, whether social, religious, civic, racial, ethnic, or political.
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Professor Pier Matteo Barone, PhD
Professor. Dr. Pier Matteo Barone teaches courses on archaeological methodology, geophysical techniques (GPR, in particular) and forensic archaeology, as well as courses on the archaeology and heritage of Rome and the eastern Mediterranean. His research is centered on different remote sensing applications to better understand the archaeological landscape. He is a recognized expert in forensic archaeology employed to testify in criminal and civil cases.
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Professor Marco Conti, PhD
Adjunct Pofessor. Professor Conti is specialized in the History of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Christian Greek and Latin Literature, and Classical and Medieval Philology. His publications include a complete critical edition with English translation of Potamius of Lisbon, an Arian writer of the IV century (Corpus Christianorum - vol. LXIX A), a complete edition with English translation of Priscillian of Avila, an heretical writer from the late IV century (Oxford Early Christian Texts), and a complete edition with English translation of the 'Life of Saint Helia', a woman saint of the IV-V century (Oxford Early Christian Texts).
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Professor Crispin Corrado, PhD
Adjunct Professor. Crispin Corrado is a classical archaeologist specializing in Roman art, who received her Ph.D. at Brown University, and an M.A. in Art History and B.A. in Classics from the University of Chicago. She has fieldwork experience at Pompeii, and has worked in a curatorial capacity in the departments of ancient art at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Vatican Museums.
She currently teaches courses related to ancient Rome at several study abroad institutions in Rome, and serves as the Academic Director for the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, the international organization dedicated to issues related to the loss and destruction of art and cultural artifacts. She is also the founder and an acting officer of the Rome Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
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Professor Giulia Facchin
Adjunct Professor.
Professor Genevieve Gessert, PhD
Professor. Professor Gessert obtained her BA in Classical Languages at the University of California and completed her PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology at Yale University, Connecticut. She has published extensively on Classical Reception, especially on the role of Ancient Rome in the 20th century.
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Professor Paul Gwynne, PhD
Professor. Professor Paul Gwynne's research focuses on late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italy, the rise and diffusion of Italian Humanism. These subjects are reflected in a trilogy of monographs that review the production of Neo-Latin poetry in Rome from 1480-1580: Poets and Princes: the Panegyric Poetry of Johannes Michael Nagonius (Brepols: Turnhout, 2012); Patterns of Patronage in Renaissance Rome: Francesco Sperulo, Poet, Prelate, Soldier, Spy (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015); Francesco Benci and the Rise of Neo-Latin Epic (Leiden: Brill, 2016). The latter volume includes a complete edition, translation and commentary of Benci’s epic, Quinque Martyres and discusses Jesuit epic in a global context.
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Professor Valerie Higgins, PhD
Professor. Valerie Higgins has an honours degree in Ancient and Mediaeval History and Archaeology from the University of Liverpool and a Master’s in Economic Archaeology from the University of Sheffield. She then worked as a professional archaeologist in local government before returning to the University of Sheffield to complete a Ph.D. on human remains from an Italian monastery site. After periods of research in the United States and New Zealand she came to live in Rome where she has been teaching and researching Italian archaeology.
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Professor Jens Koehler, PhD
Adjunct Professor. Jens Koehler studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, and the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East at Marburg and at Munich universities. His Ph.D. thesis “Pompai” describes the visual appearance of Greek and Roman festivals of the Hellenistic period. His main research interests are the Roman thermo-mineral baths (or spa baths), a project that was inspired by the Terme Taurine near Civitavecchia, and the ancient aqueducts, firstly for the water supply of Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, and actually the Aqua Alexandrina, Rome. He is member of two associations studying water supply and engineering in Antiquity (Frontinus Society and Deutsche Wasserhistorische Gesellschaft).
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Professor Ambra Spinelli, PhD
Adjunct Professor. Dr. Ambra Spinelli is a classical archaeologist and art historian who received a B.A. in Classics and a M.A. in Archaeology from the Università di Bologna, and a Ph.D. in Art History (with a specialization in Classical Art & Archaeology) from the University of Southern California. Her scholarship integrates the analysis of artifacts, architecture, decorative and textual evidence to explore ancient Roman domestic and everyday life. Her interests also encompass the influence of Eastern and Italic rituals on Roman soil, and Roman perceptions and adaptations of earlier traditions. At AUR, she teaches courses in Roman art and archaeology as well as Greek and Roman history and religion.
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