People > Doctoral Students
Mirjam von Bechtolsheim is a full-time PhD student in Classical Studies at the Open University, researching schematic votive figurines from pre-Roman Central Italy. Her collaborative doctoral project is in partnership with the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), whose collection of figurines forms the core and starting point of her research. The aim is to re-contextualise the figurines in the Museum’s collection, and to offer new insights into this type of figurine’s development across time and space, as well as its ritual, social, and cultural significance. In order to bridge the substantial gaps in our knowledge of these small bronzes, Mirjam will be drawing on a range of research methodologies, including metallurgical and stylistic analysis, as well as theories and methods developed in the fields of material religion and sensory studies.
Shirley Elderfield is a part-time Research Student at the Open University, working across the departments of Religious Studies and Classical Studies. Having completed an MA in Classical Studies on the oracle of Delphi, she is now continuing her research on Greek oracles with an interdisciplinary PhD on sensory experience at the oracle of Zeus at Dodona in north-western Greece. A study of the ancient textual sources will be used together with an evaluation of the material remains and objects connected with the sanctuary in order to formulate an assessment of sensory experience at the oracle site. This research will use a sensory studies approach and embrace the concept of ‘intersensoriality’ to evaluate the ways in which the different senses relate to and interplay with each other. In this context, a material culture methodology is key to understanding the function of the material objects and how their relationship both to other objects and the individual helps to create sensory experience.
Tony Potter is a part-time research student in the Department of Classical Studies at the Open University where he is researching sensory change in Etruscan mortuary assemblages. Tony’s research project aims to re-interpret the Etruscan mortuary material culture from specific sites throughout Etruria and examine its changing materiality and sensory profile over time. This will be accomplished by bringing sensory studies into dialogue with recent theoretical developments in Archaeology, specifically the post-anthropocentric approaches which are collectively referred to as ‘New Materialism(s)’. This research will explore the relational nature of Etruscan mortuary assemblages and synthesise the evidence in support of a bi-directional influence between both the sensing and the sensed in the material generation and the material expression of Etruscan mortuary ritual.
Past Doctoral Students
Barbara Roberts (PhD awarded 2023). Barbara Roberts’ PhD project was on amuletic objects in late antique Italy and Sicily. In the thesis, the terms ‘amulet’ and ‘amuletic’ were redefined and used to refer to a variety of material things employed by people in antiquity to protect, heal, or bring good luck. The project moved beyond conventional understandings of amulets as things that were worn by individuals (e.g. pendants), and instead included things like large stones placed within landscapes, and objects used in burials. The thesis examined examples of such objects from the material culture of late antique Italy and Sicily, focusing especially on the different relations these objects had with people in different temporal, physical and social contexts. Overall, Barbara’s project has moved the conversation about amuletic objects away from questions of identification or typology to instead investigate how these powerful things were entangled with people, the landscape, and the late antique world at large.
Adam Parker (PhD awarded 2022). Adam Parker completed his PhD on the archaeology of magic in Roman Britain. This research was a material culture-led project which aimed to investigate the vast corpus of artefacts which can be described as magical and assess it in terms of four key questions: In which contexts were magical objects used? Are there differences between different regions of Roman Britain? Are there changes over time? Are there links between objects, practices and specific groups in society? The results of these four key questions fed into a wider discussion regarding the role and function of magic in Britain during the Roman period.
