This lecture series grew out of an earlier series of research
seminars on ‘Rome: the Growth of the City from the Return of the Popes
to the Present’, which was supported jointly by the Italian department at UCL and The Department of History of Art and Screen Media at Birkbeck, with assistance from the Italian Cultural Institute, the British School at Rome, the Comune of Rome, and the Region of Lazio.
Meetings between 2005-2008 brought together scholars from a range of
disciplines with a shared interest in Rome and its development as a
metropolis. The central theme of reading the present – be it the
Renaissance or the twenty-first century – through the city’s inescapable
past produced a highly original approach that has been lacking from both Anglophone histories of Rome and urban studies. A book based on these seminars ‘Rome: Continuing Encounters between Past and Present’ will appear in 2011 with Ashgate.
Following the conclusion
of the three-year project, the series has been maintained as a termly
lecture. Speakers who have given lectures to date are: John David Rhodes (Sussex), Rose Marie San Juan (UCL), Jacopo Benci (British School at Rome), Eileen Rubery (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Mark Wilson Jones (Bath).
The organisers invite all those working on or interested in any aspect of Rome to attend and welcome suggestions for future papers. Please contact Lesley Caldwell (l.caldwell@ucl.ac.uk) or Dorigen Caldwell (d.caldwell@bbk.ac.uk).
