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Simon Malmberg
Research Fellow
I took up my post as research fellow at the Institute in October 2007. Since my first visit to the Institute ten years earlier, as a student on the archaeological course, I have returned annually to Rome – a city I have come to enjoy a lot.
In 2003 I received my PhD at Uppsala University on a thesis about Roman imperial banquets and their political significance. The thesis also comprised a comparison between the political roles of Rome and Constantinople, which later led to a post-doctoral project at the Institute on Ravenna as a Roman capital city.
I have also studied how modern research on the so-called barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire has changed during the last quarter-century. There has been intense debate about these subjects, probably originating from current issues such as immigration, the expansion of the European Union and European identity.
I have been a member of the Institute’s Tiburtina Project since its start in 2004, to which I have contributed topographical studies about movement flows on the Esquiline, and the development of the periphery of Rome in the imperial period. Working with the Tiburtina team has been immensely inspiring, a lot thanks to its multi-disciplinary approach, and I have also continued my research within this field as research fellow. Combining history and archaeology has to me always been close at heart, and bringing in further disciplines makes it even more fun.
My project years brought me to conferences in the US and several countries in Europe, half-year scholarships at the Swedish Institutes in Istanbul and Rome, and an academic year as a visiting scholar at Oxford University. These experiences are further developed here, in the metropolis of classical archaeology.
It has also been exciting to plan courses and begin teaching at the Institute. I have previously taught classical archaeology and ancient history on the graduate level at Uppsala University, and led field courses in Istanbul and Rome – it is always a lovely feeling to teach in the field! As research fellow, I have taught the major part of the Institute’s ten-week archaeological course during spring 2008 and led a Byzantine seminar in the autumn of the same year.
Selected publications
‘Navigating the urban Via Tiburtina’ In H. Bjur & B. Santillo Frizell (eds.), Via Tiburtina. Space, movement & artefacts in the urban landscape (forthcoming in 2009).
‘The suburb as centre' In H. Bjur & B. Santillo Frizell (eds.), Via Tiburtina. Space, movement & artefacts in the urban landscape (forthcoming in 2009). Written together with Hans Bjur.
‘Dazzling dining’ In L. Brubaker & K. Linardou (eds.), Eat, drink and be merry. The production, consumption and celebration of food and wine in Byzantium (Birmingham 2007), pages 75-92.
‘Visualising hierarchy at imperial banquets’ In W. Mayer & S. Trzcionka (eds.), Feast, fast or famine. Food and drink in Byzantium (Brisbane 2005), pages 11-24.
Dazzling dining. Banquets as an expression of imperial legitimacy (Uppsala 2003).
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