20 March 2026
Prof Carlos Machado (Professor of Ancient History at the School of Classics)
Tell us about your research and how it connects to memory/identity studies?
Much of my research is concerned with the city of Rome at the end of Antiquity, a time of great social, political, and cultural change. In late antique Rome, the past was an ever present reality, be it through the old monuments that characterised the former imperial city, some of them falling apart, others still being restore; the legends about the old Gods and their cults and the stories about Christian martyrs that circulated; the political rhetoric of the Roman elites that knew that the prestigious past of their city was an important political argument in their complex interactions with distant emperors and the new “barbarian” rulers. My research has explored how the past was used as a political argument, but also how Antiquarianism was a specific culture that marked this period, shaping how different groups (including religious groups) perceived and acted in social life.
What are you working on now?
I am now working on the issue of poverty, how it was experienced and how it was confronted by vulnerable groups in the western Roman Empire in the final centuries of Antiquity. Here too the issue of memory plays a key role: not only because members of the lower classes still sought to celebrate the memory of their cherished ones (something that involves considerable methodological challenges to study), but also because they constructed their own notions of the past, articulating specific social and cultural identities.