Livia Adams

"Clodius"

Liv Albert

"What is Mythology?"

Victoria Austen

"Augustan Monuments in Rome"

Victoria Austen is an Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also a member of the Peopling the Past team, a digital humanities initiative hosts free, open-access resources for teaching and learning about real people in the ancient world and the people who study them. When she is not thinking about the Roman Empire, she likes to run for sanity.

Jo Ball

"Arminius"

Elton Barker

"The Bacchae"

Elton is a professor of ancient Greek things at The Open University. His first experience of the ancient world came in the mid 1980s in the form of the futuristic Franco-Japanese anime Ulysees 31 and the Jackanory Special: Odysseus, the greatest hero of them all, presented by Blackadder's Baldrick. A first-generation student at the University of Leeds, he went on to do a Masters at Ohio State and a PhD at Cambridge, and teach at Bristol, Nottingham, Reading and Oxford (Christ Church) before landing at the OU. He's now making a living from (still) reading the stories of Homer's epics, on which he has published a Beginner’s Guide (with Joel Christensen). He is also stubbornly the non-techie guy using digital methods and tools for exploring the forms of place in, and the spatial form of, the texts of Herodotus and Pausanias. In this role, he co-runs a global network called Pelagios, where people from academia, cultural heritage, and the creative industries get together to make information about the past more open and accessible to all, which perfectly aligns with the core ethos of the OU.

Mike Beer

"Augustus - an Introduction"

My name is Dr Mike Beer. I am an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. I am also an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. Areas of
academic interest include food in antiquity, ancient religion and the Julio-Claudian emperors.

When I am not thinking about the ancient world, I think a lot about the paintings of Caravaggio and Brutalist architecture.

Chance Bonar

"Slavery in Roman Society"

Chance Bonar (he/they) is an Advising Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Virginia. He has a PhD in Religion from Harvard University. Their research focuses heavily on ancient Christianity, slavery in the Roman world, and the history and literature of ancient Palestine. They have published two books on authorship and enslavement to God, and have three more books forthcoming on ancient slave revolts, late ancient Gazan literature, and the reception of the biblical figure of Onesimus.

Josh Cannon

"The Battle of Carrhae"

Dr. Josh Cannon is currently the Director of Research for the University of Pittsburgh's Frederick Honors College. He is also the author of Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran's Iliad (2025). He served in the Marine Corps from 2000-2005 as an Arabic cryptologic linguist, including two deployments to Iraq. Following the military, his research focused on the archaeology of Late Bronze Anatolia, examining the Hittite ceramic tradition and its predecessor, the Alişar III tradition. His fieldwork took place at Çadır Höyük in the Yozgat Province of Türkiye, and he received his PhD from the University of Chicago. Josh currently works with connecting veterans to the Humanities, partnering with the University of Pennsylvania’s Eternal Soldier program and Pittsburgh’s Veterans Breakfast Club.

Christy Constantakopoulou

"The Athenian Empire"

Stephen deCasien

"The Battle of Actium"

Stephen DeCasien is an ancient historian and nautical archaeologist specializing in Mediterranean naval warfare and maritime technology. Stephen is currently the Henry A. Kissinger Visiting Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. At Yale, he is working on his book, co-edited with William M. Murray, Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, titled The Naval Rams from the Battle of the Egadi (Aegates) Islands in 241 BCE. The book presents archaeological evidence recovered from the first securely identified ancient naval battlefield and examines Roman and Carthaginian naval logistics and maritime power.

Bret Devereaux

"The First Punic War"

Bret C. Devereaux is a historian specializing in warfare during the Middle Roman Republic and a teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University. His book project, Of Arms and Men: Why Rome Always Won, forthcoming with Oxford University Press, investigates the costs of fielding armies in this period. He also blogs about the intersection of history and pop culture at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog).

Lexi Diggins

"Boudica"

Lexi Diggins is an archaeologist and curator with experience across Iron Age and Roman sites. Her work foregrounds women in archaeology, from contemporary practitioners to those involved in the 1930s digs at Verulamium, as well as Iron Age and Romano-British women evidenced in the archaeological record.
Lexi hopes to use archaeology to tell more inclusive stories about Britain’s past.

Jane Draycott

"Fulvia"

"Jane Draycott is a Roman historian and archaeologist, and the author of Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen and Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome. When she is not reading, writing, or thinking about Roman history and archaeology, she enjoys indulging her wanderlust by travelling to interesting places, playing computer games, cooking vegan food, practising yoga and hooping. She lives in Glasgow with a tyrannical Norwegian Forest Cat named Magnus, and is currently renovating a dilapidated Victorian house.