The workshop is organized by the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires and the Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions, in collaboration with the ERC project Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (SpaceLaw).
Antonio Lopez Garcia will give a talk on "Public Libraries in the Roman Empire: An Analysis of the Architectural Typology" and Samuli Simelius will talk about "Imperial architecture and private space in the Roman Empire".
Over the last two centuries, imperial architecture has been extensively researched in Classical and Near Eastern archaeology, to the extent that it has been sometimes considered as rather “old fashioned” and elite-focused. Recent methodological innovations have opened up new lines of research into the connection imperial and non-imperial identities through architecture, across different periods and regions. This workshop aims to bring scholars working on these different periods (e.g., Neo-Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Ottoman) and regions (e.g., Italy, Egypt, Israel, Iran) together, while learning from one another. Due to the nature of the academic world, often these architectural specialists have been working with other specialists focused in their geographical area or period, but in isolation from one another. This workshop objective is to address the issues of variation within architecture, specifically Imperial architecture examining in which ways variation and continuity are perceived and presented. Furthermore, we are interested in studying the range of methodologies and theoretical understandings of Imperial identities through the medium of architecture. Likewise, the workshop seeks to create a new methodological framework to study Imperial architecture, both polite and religious, and its relationship to community identity.
The workshop is free to attend, but please register your participation using the following link: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/96830/lomake.html (registration closes on Monday 22 April).