Call for papers
Administrative professionalization has conventionally been the hallmark of a modern state. The conceptual separation of the office and its holder has long defined the European way of governance. The origin of this European tradition of the separation of public and private has often been seen in the Roman Republican political organization with its strict responsibilities, term limits and defined powers of its magistracies who operated in public spaces. Nonetheless, this view has been challenged by the recent research on the Roman Republic and its legacy. The conference aims to build a new interpretation of the Roman Republican governance: a comprehensive re-evaluation of the ancient Roman administrative tradition and its links with the European heritage through the lens of Republican and administrative space. The conference seeks to investigate this neglected issue through the spatial analysis of power relations and meanings. The significance of these issues extends much beyond this: the development of administrative space in the European context amounts to nothing less than the emergence of the concept of public.
The conference advances the idea of republicanism through changes that are addressed via developments in the political, economic and social context from the Roman Republic to the Empire and beyond. While much of the earlier research on Republican administration has been constitutional, focused on authority or the individual magistrates, the conference encourages a new interpretation through spatial and topographical analysis, using unconventional methodological tools to explore the social and cultural dimensions of legal and administrative space. At the center is the confrontation of ideas and their contexts from the Roman Republic to modern republicanism, building on the questions: How did the conflict between Republican ideals, political power, and administrative practices transform the spaces of administration? How did this conflict change the social topography of Rome and other cities and the public and private spheres of governance? How did Rome become the model for the Western administrative state?
Themes (suggested, but not limited to):
• The idea of Republican space
• Administration and space in practice
• Republican, democratic, and authoritarian architecture?
• Distinction of public and private in administration and the everyday
• Development of institutional space from the Roman Republic to the modern era
• New methodologies to study Republican administrative space
• Gender, intersectionality and public space
• Archaeology and topography of the Roman Republic and magistrates
Keynote speakers: Valentina Arena, Dunia Filippi, Greg Woolf and Aldo Schiavone.
The conference is organized by the ERC-funded project Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (SpaceLaw), based at the University of Helsinki. There is no conference fee. The organizers are unfortunately unable to aid in either travel or accommodation arrangements or the cost of travel or accommodation.
Abstracts should be 300 words maximum, for 20-minute papers to be delivered in English. Abstracts should be sent to lawgovernanceandspace@gmail.com. The deadline for abstracts is 1 October 2023.
Questions may be sent to samuli.simelius@helsinki.fi.
Please register here.
Registration will close on 9. January 2024 (EET 23.59).
Dunia Filippi: 'Epistemology of space: a methodological implementation in the study of the Roman city'
Valentina Arena: 'The Censors between Private and Public: An Antiquarian Perspective’
Aldo Schiavone: 'The republican model and Roman political history. Facts and ideologies'
Greg Woolf: 'From Timing to Spacing: shifts in the periodic construction of public spaces in Rome'
9:00-10:00 Keynote: Dunia Filippi: Epistemology of space: a methodological implementation in the study of the Roman city
Chair: Samuli Simelius
10.00-10.15 Coffee break
10:15-12:15 Session 1: Interpreting the space beyond the public and private dichotomy
Chair: Juhana Heikonen
Arnaud Paturet: Some considerations about public and private spheres in Roman legal system
Anna Miączewska: Politicizing Private Space: Roman Household in Times of Unrest
Samuli Simelius: Public and Private - spatiovisual considerations
Kamil Kopij, Adam Pilch, Monika Drab, Szymon Popławski, Kaja Głomb: Can you see me? Can you hear me? Investigating speech audibility and speaker visibility during Roman public assemblies
12.15-13.45 Lunch break
13:45-15:15 Session 2: Diplomats
Chair: Anna-Maria Wilskman
Gregor Diez: Foreign Diplomats in Republican Rome: Communicating Power in Public and Private Space
Gabriel Rosselló: Diplomatic space and performativity as metaphors of power. The example of the III Punic War
Enrique García Riaza and Borja Vertedor Ballesteros: Parva Roma: the topography of diplomatic spaces on provincial soil during the Republic (218-146). The camp as an analogy of the Urbs
15.15-15.45 Coffee break
15:45-17:15 Session 3: Magistrates and administrators
Chair: Antonio Lopez Garcia
Ido Israelowich: The rise of the Roman land surveyors as a judicial authority
Filippo Incontro: Production of space in Africa between Roman Republic and Empire. Considerations on the pertica Carthaginiensium
Anna Tarwacka: Between the private and the public. The censors’ duties of delimiting space
17:30-18:30 Keynote Aldo Schiavone: The republican model and Roman political history. Facts and ideologies
Chair: Kaius Tuori
9:00-10:00 Keynote Greg Woolf: From Timing to Spacing: shifts in the periodic construction of public spaces in Rome
Chair: Anna-Maria Wilskman
10.00-10.15 Coffee break
10:15-12:15 Session 4: Republican Rome
Chair: Vesa Heikkinen
Anna-Maria Wilskman: Men becoming monuments: Republican Ideals in the Light of Numismatic Evidence
Antonello Mastronardi: The false flight: How ( and when) Italians returned to Asia after the massacre of 88 BCE and their role in the Sullan settlement of the province
Ian Goh: Three Scipios Moving Through Roman Space
Kaius Tuori: Roman Republicanism as a networked process: Models and methodologies
12.15-13.45 Lunch break
13:45-15:15 Session 5: Basilicae
Chair: TBC
Michael Eisenberg: Civic Basilicae of the provinces of Syria- Palaestina and Arabia and their spatial setting within the polis space
Antonio Lopez Garcia: New Observations on the Yearly Periods of Judicial Trials in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome
Juhana Heikonen: Changes in Roman Administrative Space from the Principate to Late Antiquity Through Activity Space Research
15.15-15.45 Coffee break
15:45-17:15 Session 6: Reception
Chair: TBC
Carlos Amunátegui Perelló: Libertas and Dominium. A Legacy of the Roman Republican Market Economy
Ville Erkkilä: The hard-working heart of the Roman republic? Spaces of revolution in the socialist understanding of Rome
Vesa Heikkinen: Civil religion in the republican tradition – a Hegelian approach
17:30-18:30 Keynote Valetina Arena: The Censors between Private and Public: An Antiquarian Perspective
Chair: Antonio Lopez Garcia
The conference will be held at the University of Helsinki City Centre Campus:
If you have any questions or need more information concerning the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us: lawgovernanceandspace@gmail.com
Conference organizing committee
Samuli Simelius
Kaius Tuori
Juhana Heikonen
Antonio Lopez Garcia
Anna-Maria Wilskman
Vesa Heikkinen
Lilian Kiander