The Intermediate Bodies of the Roman Cities: Sociability and Agency of the Middling Groups in Roman Italy (Late Republic - 3rd c. AD)

ongoing

InBoRC wants to design a more plural and complex image of the Roman city to integrate and go beyond the classical vision based on the élite and characterised by a top-down approach. As such, it focuses on the social, economic and political impact of middling groups in the city from the Late Republic to the 3rd c. AD. In order to do that the research is based on the study of the intermediate bodies of the cities – social aggregational cores intermediate between the family and the city – which are our best indicator of the civic action of this stratum of population. The project will mainly focus on the epigraphical sources coming from the cities of Roman Italy. However, InBoRC is not geographically strictly limited, but it is nourished by punctual parallels coming from the epigraphical documentation of Roman provinces. The main goals of this research are: i) analyse the sociability of these groups, and ii) study their agency in the civic life. The principal outcome of the project will be a monograph built on a multidisciplinary approach involving epigraphy, Roman history, sociology, economic and urban history, and archaeology. As a support of the monograph, I will provide digital open data of the inscriptions analysed in the text. Ancient texts will be encoded and enriched with metadata (city, people, institutions, etc.) using EpiDoc XML language in order to integrate new open linked data within existing European e-infrastructures (eg. Trismegistos, EDH, EDR). These goals will be achieved by a unique combination of “hands-on” research training, courses and workshops on scientific and complementary so-called “soft” skills facilitated by Brown University, ANHIMA Research Center, and the University of Bologna. The success of this project will allow me to assume fixed term tenure track position and eventually to obtain the position of Associate Professor at UNIBO.