Our speakers

Duncan Keenan-Jones

Duncan is Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the relationship between environment, technology and society in the past, especially in the ancient Mediterranean and in Australia. He is particularly interested in how past and Indigenous practices can help us manage this relationship today. Duncan's research interests are focused on the intersection between Roman society, environment and technology, which he investigates using Latin and Greek texts, archaeological evidence, and geoscientific analyses of limestone deposits.

James Renshaw

With a degree in Classics from Oxford University, James has taught classical subjects at school level since 1998, including for 15 years at St Paul’s School and then 9 years at the Godolphin and Latymer School. He has written a number of books, including In Search of the Romans (Bloomsbury, 2019). James is an experienced lecturer, representing both the Arts Society and the V&A Academy, and most recently speaking on the V&A’s Classicism: Antiquity to Christianity and Enlightenment to Modernity courses.

Paul Roberts OBE

Dr Paul Roberts is former  Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University.   He studied Classics at Cambridge, Classical Archaeology at Sheffield and Oxford. He lived in Italy for several years, teaching and researching. He has travelled throughout the former Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria, and has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya, Turkey and in particular Italy. He has written on the daily life of ordinary people, including on Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Roman Emperors. His latest book Ancient Rome in Fifty Monuments came out in Spring 2024.

From 1994 to 2015 he was Senior Roman Curator at the British Museum, and curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013). For the Ashmolean he curated Last Supper in Pompeii.

Stuart Harvey

Stuart is a “History and Art Communicator” of 30 years experience. He is a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide (qualified in 1998 - awarded “New Guide of the Year”) and also a Guida Turistica Abilitata della Provincia di Roma. He has led study tours all over Europe. Living in Rome since 2003, Stuart has developed a great love for the Eternal City and its many treasures.  

Sam Moorhead

From 2006 to 2023, Dr Sam Moorhead was the National Finds Adviser for Iron Age and Roman coins in the Portable Antiquities and Treasure Section at the British Museum, working as a Curator in the Dept of Coins and Medals. He oversaw the identification and recording of tens of thousands of Roman coins found every year by metal detectorists, most notably the Frome Hoard.  He has excavated widely in the Mediterranean and Britain and still works on excavations and on Roman coins at the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes. He has written and co-written numerous books on history, archaeology and numismatics, including A History of Roman Coinage in Britain.