The Thomas Spencer Jerome Lecture Series is among the most prestigious international platforms for the presentation of new work on Roman history and culture. The Jerome Lectures are delivered at both the American Academy in Rome and the University of Michigan. Rubina Raja, professor of classical archaeology and art and centre director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University in Denmark, will give the lectures this year.

Rubina Raja will present three lectures and a seminar focusing on the rich and complex urban cultures in the Roman and late antique Near East but also make excursions to earlier and later periods, including those of the Hellenistic and early Islamic times.

Contextualizing Roman Ruins: Urban Cultures of Antiquity and the Long Late Antiquity in the Near East

The impressive remaining ruins of the cities of the ancient Near East—cities such as Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem), Apamea, Baalbek (Heliopolis), Bostra, Caesarea Marittima, Jerash, and Palmyra—almost all date to the Roman period. This is no accident; the Roman empire was an “empire of cities.” In the western Mediterranean, where there had been relatively few cities, the Romans planted an enormous number of new ones. The East, on the other hand, was already densely populated with cities. Here the ancient settlements of the Levant flourished under Roman rule, growing steadily in size and prosperity.

These cities gradually took on a new appearance too, as they each acquired the grand appurtenances and amenities of a Roman metropolis or model city: aqueducts, vaulted bath buildings, stone theaters, covered markets, colonnaded streets, monumental frontal temple buildings. In recent years these cities have attracted a fair amount of attention from archaeologists and historians; nonetheless they generally remain outside our accepted narratives of the evolving urban cultures of the Roman world.

The Thomas Spencer Jerome Lecture series revisits these long-established centers of the Roman Near East and the various ancient peoples who inhabited them. The lectures will seek to trace, through archaeological evidence and historical sources, the transformation of these cities from the late first century BCE until late antiquity and into the early Islamic period. These lectures will reveal the emergence of new and distinctive kinds of “urbanity” in the monumental spaces of these Levantine communities.

Urban development in the Roman period prompted major political, social, and religious changes, generating different “regimes of urban living” distinctive to the region. The lectures will take us through a series of extremely varied, yet nonetheless recognizable urban landscapes: the Decapolis, the Limestone Massif and the Tetrapolis; the settlements along the Mediterranean coast; and places deep inland such as Palmyra in the Syrian Desert and the Hauran. By the end of the journey, the lectures shall have situated these cities as physical manifestations of a local or regional experiment in “urban self-fashioning”—as the peoples of the region, collectively and individually, availed themselves of the alluring opportunities of the Roman peace.

1. Greek and Local Heritages in Urban Landscapes of the Near East: Cultural Amnesia versus the Longue Durée?
December 2 – 6:00pm
American Academy in Rome 
Via Angelo Masina, 5
00153 Rome Italy

2. A World of Local Cultures in a Roman Sea: The Rise of Urban Landscapes in the Near East
December 4 – 6:00pm
Istituto Svedese di Studi Classici a Roma
Via Omero, 14 
00197 Rome Italy

3. The Long Late Antiquity: From Cities to Villages and Back Again
December 9 – 6:00pm
American Academy in Rome 
Via Angelo Masina, 5
00153 Rome Italy

Cities in the Near East flourished after the later third century. While they might not have expanded physically, new research has documented vital and rich urban life marked by a high degree of networking between different groups. Christianity also made a firm imprint on the cities—not least those in the Near East, the region in which the new religion came into being. Churches became new urban prestige monuments and midsized cities could have several dozens of these constructed within a few centuries. Cities such as Damascus, Jerash, and Palmyra testify to long lives—in some respects deeply changed; new foundations such as Anjar (in modern Lebanon) also drew on classical ideals. This lecture looks at changing urban environments and investigates how societies changed—including through the reshaping of built environments—and how they did not change. It takes us all the way up until the end of the Umayyad dynasty in the context of the long eighth century.

The Jerome Lectures will be held in English.

This event, to be presented in person at the Academy, is free and open to the public.

About the Speaker

Rubina Raja, a distinguished classical archaeologist, completed her MSt and DPhil at Oxford University, following studies in Copenhagen and Rome. After postdoctoral roles in Hamburg and Aarhus, she joined Aarhus University as an associate professor in 2009. Six years later she became the first female professor of classical art and archaeology in Denmark. She also directs the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean’s urban and societal developments from the Hellenistic to medieval periods.

Her groundbreaking fieldwork in Palmyra, Jerash, and Rome has illuminated ancient urban networks, earning her prestigious awards like the Humboldt Foundation’s Bessel Prize and the Royal Danish Academy’s Silver Medal for the humanities. A dedicated mentor and advocate for the humanities, Raja holds multiple leadership certifications and regularly engages in public outreach. In 2023, she was a visiting fellow at Oxford’s All Souls College, continuing to advance high-definition archaeological research.