People > Doctoral Students
Tabby Barton is a part-time research student at The Open University working in the Department of Classical Studies. Their research topic is on wheel symbology in Iron Age and Roman religion across North-western Europe. This project will be accomplished by studying the archaeological evidence for the wheel as a religious symbol (in sacred, funerary, and personal contexts) and examining this information alongside literary and epigraphical evidence pertaining to what the wheel represents mythologically. Tabby hopes to be able to expand our knowledge of ancient religion and create a way to gain a deeper understanding about how ancient people interacted with their religion on a personal level through their objects.
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 funerary assemblages. Tony’s doctoral thesis is being supervised by Professor Phil Perkins and Professor E-J Graham and is entitled: ‘Sensory Experience in the Funerary Assemblages of Etruscan Cerveteri.’
Tony’s research focuses on funerary assemblages from the southern Etruscan city of Caere (modern-day Cerveteri). It investigates how the sensory affordances generated by these assemblages changed over time, thus shedding light on shifting ritual practices, material engagements and lived experiences of Caeretan mortuary culture. His research is underpinned by Assemblage Theory, a key framework within Deleuzian New Materialism, which reconceptualises reality as vibrant, dynamic, relational, and constituted of a multiplicity of heterogeneous elements that are constantly 'becoming'. Essentially, New Materialism asks us to think differently about the world around us, it asks us to consider what 'things' are capable of doing rather than merely asking us to think about their assigned symbolic function. A New Materialist approach such as the one being developed and applied in Tony’s research will facilitate a nuanced exploration of the materiality and the changes in multi-sensory experience over time in Caeretan funerary assemblages. Moreover, it aims to provide a proven new method that can be applied to other ancient world case studies.
Past Doctoral Students
Mirjam von Bechtolsheim (PhD awarded 2024) is an expert in schematic votive figurines from pre-Roman Central Italy. Her collaborative doctoral project was in partnership with the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), whose collection of figurines formed the core and starting point of her research. The aim of her thesis was 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 drew 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.
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.