Introducing New Lecturer E-J Graham
I joined the department as Baron Thyssen Lecturer in Classical Studies nearly a year ago now (September 2012) and the time has flown by, probably because there have been so many varied and exciting things happening. On to those in a minute though because I should probably introduce myself properly first. I’m a Roman archaeologist and my parents will tell you that they knew that this was the career for me when, on holiday as a child, I invented the ‘let’s bury all the buckets and spades on the beach and then try to find them by digging them up’ game (needless to say we didn’t find them all and my Dad was less than impressed that I hadn’t even left him a spade to dig with). I completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield and then spent nine months pursuing more research as Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome before returning to the UK to work as a field archaeologist. Subsequently, I held a series of teaching posts that have allowed me to travel the length and breadth of the country, including Cardiff, St. Andrews (twice) and Leicester. In terms of (non-beach related) research, I’m interested in
Read more about E-J’s research on the department website http://www.open.ac.uk/ Arts/classical-studies/ graham.shtml
Roman bodies: living ones, dead ones, smelly ones, real ones or models, whole ones or partial ones, young and old ones, and all the stages in between. My background lies largely in mortuary archaeology and much of my research has focused on the range of ways in which Roman communities responded to death, including the burial practices of the urban poor at Rome, cremation ritual and memory. What I enjoy about this sort of research is the challenge of combining excavated evidence with inscriptions and written accounts of funerary ritual, as well as with theoretical ideas about how people react to the opportunities and emotions that dead bodies throw at them, not to mention what these responses tell us about human relationships and identities. Over the last year or so I’ve moved away from the
E-J is interested in votive practice, especially anatomical ex-votos. In June 2012 she organised a conference on this subject at the British School at Rome (Bodies of Evidence).
end of the life-course, with a new project focused on its beginnings, although still very much concerned with the body. I’ve been looking at terracotta votive offerings of babies wrapped in swaddling bands. Deposited alongside the better known