Classics professor Antony Augoustakis co-organized a major international conference earlier this year, bringing together scholars from around the globe.

In partnership with Radboud University and Anchoring Innovation in the Netherlands, as well as Newcastle University and St. Andrews University in the United Kingdom, Augoustakis co-organized “The Damned Despot: Rethinking Domitian and the Flavian World.” The event, which took place in late January, concluded the international exhibition, “Domiziano Imperatore. Odio e amore” at the Capitoline Museums in Rome, which had been open since last summer.

“Since it was the first big conference after the pandemic, [it] allowed for great interactions and conversations among participants who are working on various subfields of the discipline,” said Augoustakis. “It also combined presentations on literature and material culture, thus allowing for a further dialogue between the literary texts and the material remains of the period, which are many, including the Colosseum in Rome, for instance.”

There were more than 30 presentations and keynote addresses on various aspects of the Flavian period (69-96 CE) and from universities from around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Germany, Portugal, and South Korea.

“This was a great opportunity to highlight the visibility of the Department of Classics and its many connections around the world,” said Augoustakis.

The event brought to close a two-year cycle of events, from 2021 to 2023, that began with an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Van Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands and an accompanying conference.

Augoustakis said he and the other organizers have already developed plans for their next conferences, which will take place in Sicily in October 2023, in Portugal and Spain in 2024, and possibly in Greece in 2024 or 2025.

Dania De La Hoya Rojas