World history, connectivity and material culture, edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. From Cambridge University Press.

The main research objective is to map the cities of Roman Asia Minor in terms of location, size, urban amenities and juridical status, with the specific aim to understand the reasons how this urban settlement pattern arose.

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

The main objective of this research is to map out the cities of the Roman Near East in the imperial period, with a focus on location, city size and urban features, in order to study the form the urban system and its levels of integration.

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

The Skin Barrier and Vaccination group is led by Prof. Joke Bouwstra. One of the key functions of the skin is its barrier function, which is located in the uppermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum. The stratum corneum consists of enucleated dead cells (corneocytes) embedded in a lipid matrix.…

To what extent was labour-induced migration important to the functioning of the towns and cities of Roman Italy?

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire by Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma (Eds.)

The currently available in vitro generated human skin equivalents resemble the human skin in many aspects. However, some essential barrier characteristics do not fully mimic the native barrier. Consequently, the human skin equivalents cannot be used for screening of drugs for skin penetration.

Can we identify different degrees of economic integration, both within and between regions, on the basis of archaeological proxies?

The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire assembles a series of papers on key themes in the study of Roman mobility and migration.

New perspectives from archaeology and ancient history

Embracing the Provinces is a collection of essays focused on people and their daily lives living in the Roman provinces, c. 27 BC-AD 476. It offers an overview of current research on Roman provinces and frontiers, deconstructing some long-held preconceptions and providing refreshing insights into unexplored…

This project looks at material culture to better understand the character and organization of Roman colonial society in the Republican period, with a focus on the colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) in Samnium (modern-day Molise, Italy). What impact did the foundation of the colony have on precolonial…

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

This volume considers the military architecture and its impact on local communities in Rome's eastern frontier, which stretched from the north-east shore of the Black Sea to the Red Sea.

Moving Romans offers an analysis of Roman migration by applying general insights, models and theories from the field of migration history.

Ancient historians have long been aware that patterns of coin circulation can shed light on levels of economic integration in the Roman Empire. More than forty years ago, Hopkins argued that large amounts of tax money were spent in the frontier provinces and that the non-military provinces recouped…

This thesis analyses the existence and the functioning of the urban labour market in the early Roman empire by looking at the crucial influence of social structures, such as the family and non-familial labour collectives.

Focus in skin research

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

This project uses archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence to investigate urban development in Roman-period North Africa, compiling this in a GIS-linked database in order to analyse the development of urban settlement spatially over time.

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 4

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 1

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the…

This project aims to explore the environmental impact of early Roman expansion (4th/3rd century BC) through a program of dating and ecological sampling of traces of field systems (centuriations).

What representations of Protestant moderns by Roman Catholics, and vice versa, are reflected in 19th-century ‘casual’ media published between 1840 and 1910, and can we see a development over that period?

On the 17th of June Rea Matsangou successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Assessing the effects of landscape and land-use changes on the visibility of archaeological landscapes in Central-Southern Italy.

The Iseum Campense, the impressive sanctuary for Isis and the Egyptian gods on the Campus Martius and arguably one of ancient Rome’s most notable absent presences, is a monument central to various debates.

The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

How do we explain the fact that certain areas had many large cities, while other areas were studded with large numbers of small towns and yet other areas had very few urban agglomerations of any kind?

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

Human skin equivalents (HSEs) can be a valuable tool to study aspects of human skin, including the skin barrier, or to perform chemical or toxicological screenings.

This new handbook by Frits Naerebout and Henk Singor places the history of the Greeks and Romans within the larger context of the contemporary Eurasian world.

Objects, Appropriation and Cultural Change

How did ancient Greeks and Romans regard work?

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

The stratum corneum is the outermost skin layer and consists of dead cells embedded in a lipid matrix.

The Animated Image addresses the entire range of contexts in which images were described by Roman authors as being animated, as well as the accounts that Roman writers produced to explain the animation of inanimate matter.

In the studies described in this study, we introduce a novel ex vivo human skin barrier repair model. To develop this, we removed the upper layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (SC) by a reproducible cyanoacrylate stripping technique.

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 2

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 3

The research described in this thesis shows that hypercholesterolemia, a well-established risk factor for atherosclerosis, can impact skin lipid pool and barrier function already at young age. In the field of atherosclerosis, we showed that the small peptide Lyp-1 can be used as a targeting molecule…