JOE SHEPPARD

Research Fellow, RPC & EpiDoc project

Profile photo of Ashmolean Research Fellow Joe Sheppard in front of a bookshelf

Contact

Email: joe.sheppard@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
Academia edu: Joe Sheppard
ORCID: 0009-0005-6250-3740

Biography

Joe Sheppard is a social and cultural historian of the ancient Roman world, broadly understood. After undergraduate (Latin and English, with honours) and masters (Classics, with distinction) degrees in New Zealand at Victoria University of Wellington, he received a PhD from Columbia University in Classical Studies and taught at Barnard College and Washington University in St. Louis, among other places.

As a field archaeologist, Joe has supervised excavations at the Villa Adriana in Tivoli and Villa San Marco in Castellammare di Stabia. Joe’s is finding his current role as the Research Fellow on the Roman Provincial Coinage online project at the Ashmolean Museum particularly satisfying because it combines epigraphic, numismatic, philological, and art historical skills.

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Joe’s research interests lie along several lines, but may be linked by the leitmotif of communication:

  • epigraphic habits in antiquity – from individual graffiti scratched into wall plaster to monumental stone inscriptions and mass-produced texts struck on coins or stamped into bricks
  • the culture of mass entertainment spectacles – particularly in the Roman West, including literary accounts and representations in visual media
  • everyday life on imperial villas – including the occupational activities and social lives of the people who inhabited and staffed these palatial complexes.
Research projects

RPC & EpiDoc, funded by John Fell Fund 
APAHA at Hadrian’s Villa, Columbia University and La Sapienza di Roma

2009
Fulbright-NZ graduate award

2008
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Winterkursstipendium

Classics, ancient history, Greek, Latin, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, Pompeii, Roman Campania, Villa Adriana, mass spectacles, Roman Provincial Coinage

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