{"id":146,"date":"2024-09-03T15:16:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T15:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/herculaneum.classics.ox.ac.uk\/?page_id=146"},"modified":"2026-10-12T13:32:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T13:32:51","slug":"the-trustees","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/the-trustees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trustees, Chair, and President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Chair<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Alison Cooley<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alison Cooley is Professor in the Dept of Classics and Ancient History and Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick. She has long been fascinated in the history of the Bay of Naples. Pompeii: An Archaeological Site History<\/u><\/em><\/a>((2nd edition) was published by Bloomsbury in 2023. She is currently writing a companion volume for the same series on Herculaneum. A new edition of Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook<\/u><\/em><\/a> appeared in 2014 (with work currently progressing on a third edition), and the edited volume, A Companion to Roman Italy<\/u><\/em><\/a> (Blackwell-Wiley) in 2016. She was elected Chair of The Herculaneum Society in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trustees<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ms Alison Allden<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alison Allden currently is a non-executive director\/trustee on a number of boards, largely in the higher education sector. She has previously been Chief Executive of the Higher Education Statistics Agency and a member of the senior executive group at Bristol University. Prior to that she was an IT professional, for example Director of IT at Warwick University and at the National Maritime Museum. She worked at the British Museum on a major project to create a computerised record of all the objects and their documentation held by the Museum. She began her career as a professional archaeologist working for 10 years in a number of positions across England. This was after a degree studying archaeology and classics at Bristol University and a post graduate field archaeology course based at Oxford University. While at University she worked one summer at Herculaneum on a number of conservation projects, living at the Villa Maiuri. She has been a member of the Friends of Herculaneum for over 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Antony Augoustakis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Antony is Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana\u2013Champaign and Associate Dean of the Humanities and Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is author of many academic papers and several books on Latin literature, especially in the area of Flavian epic poetry, included many edited volumes, most recently Silius Italicus, Punica 3<\/em>(with R.J. Littlewood; Oxford, 2022) and Silius Italicus and the Tradition of the Roman Historical Epos<\/em>(with M. Fucechi; Leiden, 2022). Antony has organized many international conferences in the USA and Europe, especially Italy, including leading study abroad programs for American students in Italy. He has also served on committees and leadership positions for Classics societies in the USA (CAMWS, SCS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Annalisa Marzano<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Annalisa Marzano is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Bologna, and former Professor of Ancient History at the University of Reading, UK. After degrees in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Florence and Columbia University, New York, she worked as a researcher for the Oxford Roman Economy Project and was Golding Fellow at Brasenose College.  She is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society, a Member of the Academia Europaea, and Corresponding Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. Her publications include the monographs Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History<\/em> (2007), Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean<\/em> (2013), Plants Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome<\/em> (2022), and the edited volume (with G. M\u00e9traux) The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin: Late Republic to Late Antiquity<\/em> (2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr Federica Nicolardi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Federica Nicolardi is Associate Professor of Papyrology at the University of Naples Federico II and a member of the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi \u2018M. Gigante\u2019. Her research centers on the Herculaneum papyri, with a focus on critical editions and virtual restoration techniques. She actively contributes to the creation of a digital tool for virtual reconstruction of papyrus rolls (Maque-IT), collaborates on imaging the opened Herculaneum papyri (B. Seales\u2019 \u2018Digital Restoration of Herculaneum Papyri\u2019 project), and serves as the lead papyrologist for the Vesuvius Challenge. She is the Corresponding PI of the ERC Synergy 2024 project UnLost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Jess Venner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jess Venner is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford and holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, funded by the AHRC Midlands3Cities DTP. Her work examines early Imperial horticulture, urbanism, identity, and resilience in the Roman world, with a particular focus on the Bay of Naples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jess has held a Research Associateship at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, was the recipient of the Rome Award at the British School at Rome, and is an elected Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She currently serves as Editor of Vesuvian sites for the international Gardens of the Roman Empire<\/em> project, the first online corpus of Roman gardens. She reaches millions of history lovers monthly via her social media channel @lifeinthepastlane_ and her trade book, The Lost Voices of Pompeii<\/em>, was published in 2026 (HarperCollins).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mr Nigel Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nigel Wilson is Fellow and Tutor in Classics (Emeritus) of Lincoln College, Oxford, and one of the founding members of the Society. He has published the editions of Sophocles (with Hugh Lloyd-Jones), Aristophanes and Herodotus in the series of Oxford Classical Texts (1990, 2007 and 2015 respectively) and authored other publications in the fields of Greek palaeography, textual criticism and the history of classical scholarship. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mr<\/strong> Peter Robson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter Robson joined the board as Honorary Treasurer in June 2026. He read English Literature at King’s College London and took an MA in Medieval English Literature, going on to research Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He then spent ten years in business before taking an LLM and qualifying as a solicitor, and now practises in dispute resolution and tax litigation. He brings legal and financial governance experience to the role, alongside a long-standing interest in the history of collecting and in the way the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii reshaped eighteenth-century taste.
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Ms Samantha Rowley<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As Heritage and Education Manager at the Colchester Archaeological Trust, Samantha directs educational programmes, curates lecture series, organises special events, and conducts research on Roman chariot racing and arena architecture. A qualified tour guide, tutor, and youth mentor, Samantha is passionate about the Classical world and is dedicated to sharing knowledge and fostering public engagement with archaeology and ancient history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samantha Rowley earned a First-Class BA (Hons) in Classical Studies from the Open University before completing a Master of Arts in the same field, where her dissertation, Primacy of the Rose in Roman Funerary Contexts: Rosalia, Sarcophagi Decoration, and Columbaria Garlands<\/em>, received Merit. She also holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Tutoring and Coaching from The University of Worcester, and a Specialist Diploma in Education and Teaching from Middlesex University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An independent scholar in Roman funerary archaeology, Samantha continues to develop her research on the rose as a symbol of ritual and remembrance in Roman Britain and Italy, with particular attention to its sensory, iconographic, and religious dimensions. She attends conferences and symposia across Britain and Europe, and visits Roman sites worldwide to engage with current scholarship and material culture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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President<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Robert L. Fowler <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Honorary President Robert L. Fowler was educated at Toronto (MA 1977) and Oxford (DPhil 1980). After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary he joined the staff at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, where he taught from 1981-1996. From 1996 until his retirement in 2017 he was Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol. He served as a Trustee of the Society from 2004-2025. His publications include The Nature of Early Greek Lyric <\/em>(1987), The Cambridge Companion to Homer <\/em>(ed., 2004), Early Greek Mythography <\/em>(2 vols, 2000-2013), Pindar and the Sublime <\/em>(2022), and numerous articles. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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