| Domain | Cultural Change and the Classics in 20th- and 21st-Century Europe |
| Researcher(s) | Renske Janssen |
| University | Leiden University |
| Degree | PD |
| Date Range | September 2024 – present |
| Supervisor(s) | Prof. Ineke Sluiter, dr. Miko Flohr |
Despite its long, influential history within both classical and legal studies, scholarship focussed on Roman law and administration has hardly been static. This project investigates how researchers in the field themselves anchor new intellectual trends and scholarly approaches to the ancient world in their work, increasingly highlighting the voices and experiences of those outside of the traditional (social and geographical) centre of the Roman world.
Roman law has long held a special place in classical studies, and has even been described as ‘Rome’s greatest legacy to the modern world’ (Watson, The Law of the ancient Romans, 1970:3). The field has proved to be an important common point of reference within continental European legal debates, particularly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The legacy of Roman provincial administration, furthermore, caused it to be bound up in various projects of empire building, and in the twentieth century, Roman law’s prominent traditional legacy made it a useful tool for the conservative agendas of various totalitarian regimes. At the same time, however, its perceived role as a unifying force within European law and carrier of European values likewise ensured its importance during the move for increased European collaboration. Roman law, in other words, has long served as a strong, and at the same time highly flexible, anchor for legal thinking in the present.
This inspiration, however, has gone two ways. The Roman past may have been used as an important frame of reference for the (historical) present, but that same present has, in turn, shaped our understanding of the Roman past – to the point that it had been suggested that the traditional understanding of Roman law and administration as a top-down, strongly centralised and uniformising ‘tool of empire’ was just as much anchored in the socio-political circumstances under which legal historians from the past did their work, as the other way around.
In recent years, scholarship has furthermore taken on board new scholarly approaches that, influenced by a broader societal move towards democratisation and an increased focus on diversity, have moved away from the traditional social and geographical ‘centre’ of the Roman world. The legal views and experiences beyond those of the law-making elite have received increased attention — as has the role and application of Roman law in the lives of the inhabitants of the Roman provinces.
In this project, I will investigate how scholars in the field have anchored and incorporated these new approaches in their work, and how, in doing so, they relate both to the discipline’s past, and to other contemporary domains, both within and outside of academia. This provides a valuable opportunity for direct, in-depth discussion about the workings of recent broadened approaches to the ancient world among scholars in the field, and the field’s relationship to wider society
