When I first became aware that there was to be a fictional work (a triliogy no less!) based in the lupanar of Pompeii, my reaction was somewhat… disdainful. It is, I think anyone with considerable expertise would admit, incredibly difficult to consume popular culture that aims to accurately replicate your specialist subject. Anyone who has … Continue reading A Bitter Pill| Pompeian Connections
Like most of the world, it has been an unusually long time since I was last able to venture out to visit a museum. As everyone has come so much more reliant on the digital world in the last year, quite a few museums are making more effort to make their collections available online and … Continue reading Exhibiting Roman Women Online| Pompeian Connections
Another new find in Pompeii was announced on Tuesday, this time two monumental statues found in the necropolis at the Porta di Sarno. Whilst we have all watched the excavations taking place over th…| Pompeian Connections
If you’re looking for something to listen to as we start 2023, have a look at the Radio 3 Free Thinking episode I recorded back in October, which is still available through the BBC website. There’s also still plenty of time to catch the British Museum exhibition Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt referred to in the... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
This summer, I was finally able to return to Italy for the first time since 2019. It was, of course, fantastic to be back and soaking up the atmosphere again. It was also the last funded research trip of my AHRC fellowship, and I wanted to make the most of it by visiting some lesser-known... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
Developing and teaching new modules is probably one of my favourite parts of my job. It doesn’t come around very often, and it’s hugely fun to think about presenting cutting-edge research to undergraduates, who are so open to new ideas and take them to pieces very effectively. So I was very excited to be asked,... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
This past week, I ran another digital and practical epigraphy workshop with Dr Gabriel Bodard and Dr Irene Vagionakis. There was one big difference between this workshop and the one we ran back in 2019: this time, we decided to run the workshop in hybrid format, to allow for both in-person and remote participation. To... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
I’m very pleased to say that my new sourcebook, Italy Before Rome, is out on Friday. If you want to use the discount code below, which is valid until the end of 2021, then you can order direct from the publisher on this link: https://routledge.pub/ItalyBeforeRome So you can get an idea of what the book... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
On Tuesday, we held the second half of the Digital Italy seminar. Like last time, I wanted to post a links round-up so that people can find these great projects and resources and see how they develop over the coming years. Luca Rigobianco (Venice) – Building a digital corpus and a computational lexicon of the... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
We are pleased to announce two seminars on the theme of ‘Digital Italy’, to be held online on Tuesday 7th September and Tuesday 14th September (afternoon only, UK time; exact times TBC). These seminars are being held as part of the events funded by the project ‘Connectivity and Competition: Multilingualism in Ancient Italy 800-200 BC’... Continue Reading →| Katherine McDonald
Presenting the most recent addition to my now very long-running series of inscriptions in various ancient writing systems in cake form: a cake version of an inscription from Pompeii, written not in…| It's All Greek To Me
News broke on Thursday of more stunning discoveries as a result of the current excavations in Pompeii’s Regio IX. Whilst the rest of the world is agog, and rightly so, over the stunning fresc…| Pompeian Connections
Regular blog readers may remember that during my time at the British School at Athens, I was experimenting with different methods of making clay tablets, trying to find out why the makers of these …| It's All Greek To Me
One of the first things a classicist does after moving to Durham is, obviously, to pay a visit to Hadrian’s Wall: the wall begun by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 122 CE to mark the northern fr…| It's All Greek To Me