About

Ph.D. Cornell University, Classics (Classical Archaeology)
M.A. McMaster University, Classics
B.A. McMaster University, Classics (Honors)

Liana Brent specializes in the material and social histories of ordinary individuals in the Roman world. Her research interests include Roman burial practices, Latin inscriptions, Greek and Roman sculpture, museum practices, and the history of collecting antiquities. She teaches courses on Roman History, Civilization, Archaeology, Slavery, Death and Burial, as well as Latin at all levels.

Before arriving at Bates College, Liana served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Kenyon College (2020-2023), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020), and she held a two-year pre-doctoral Rome Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2017-2019). Liana received her Ph.D. in Classics with a specialization in Classical Archaeology from Cornell University (2019), as well as a B.A. and M.A. from McMaster University in Canada (2010 and 2012).

Liana is a field archaeologist who excavates a Roman cemetery in southeast Italy. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, Proceedings of the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, and in various edited volumes. She is currently working on a monograph, Corporeal Connections in Roman Burial Practices, which explores ongoing interactions between the living and the dead in Roman Italy.

In addition to her scholarly interests, Liana loves hiking, and in 2019 she hiked the Via Appia Antica (an ancient Roman road), which stretched for 350 miles from Rome to Brindisi!

Publications:

Brent, L. 2024. “Drinking with the Dead: Libation Conduits from Rome’s Columbaria to the Cortile at the American Academy in Rome.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 69: 153–79.

Brent, L. and T. Prowse. 2024. “Rural Labour and Identity at Vagnari in Southern Italy,” in Valuing Labour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by M. Flohr and K. Bowes. Mnemosyne Supplement 481, 264–286. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Brent, L. 2022. “The Via Appia is Easiest if Taken Slowly.” In Ways of Walking, edited by A. De Forest, 108–122, New Door Books.

Brent, L. 2020. “Sealed and Revealed: Roman Grave-opening Practices.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 33: 129–146.

Brent, L. 2020. “Flaming Torches: The Materiality of Fire and Flames on Roman Cinerary Urns,” in Cultures of Stones: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone, edited by G. Cooney, B. Gilhooley, N. Kelly and S. Mallía-Guest, 213–226. Leiden: Sidestone Press.

Brent, L. 2017. “Disturbed, Damaged and Disarticulated: Grave Reuse in Roman Italy,” in TRAC 2016: Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, edited by R. Cascino, F. De Stefano, A. Lepone and C.M. Marchetti, 37–50. Rome: Edizioni Quasar.

Brent, L. and T. Prowse. 2014. “Grave Goods and Patterns of Distribution in the Vagnari Cemetery,” in Beyond Vagnari: New Themes in the Study of South Italy, edited by A.M. Small, 99–109. Bari: Edipuglia.