Francesca Rohr

Francesca Rohr is Full Professor in Roman History at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. She is Substitute PI in « PRIN 2022: Project : #EtiamEgo. Violence against women in ancient Rome » (2023-2025) and PI in « VeDPh Project : Roma al femminile, tra storia antica e presente ». (2020-2023). She is the author of over 80 contributions published as book chapters or articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes and conference proceedings; among them 8 books. She has promoted several Public Engagement initiatives.

The project

Title: Women's Oratory in the Roman world: the gender Dimension in ancient Speeches (8th BCE – 1st CE)

"The Research focuses on two main topics:

1. The political history of the Late Republican and Proto-Imperial Age. The goal is to study the protagonists of this new political phase and the new ways of their mutual relationship and action: Viri militares (The research investigates the processes of renewal of the ruling class in the last century of the republic and especially the pathways of the rise of homines novi); Matronae (The research aims to establish the spaces and modes of political female action in the crisis of the late Republic, the context in which the particular political conjunctures and the physical separation of the men from institutional centers of power allowed opportunities for intervention of matrons in the political arena. In this situation they redefined the female models, with a valorization of the legendary tradition of monarchical and proto republican ages and with a strong resizing of exempla meso Republicans, as the criterion for comparison only for denigration).
2. Political Communication from the Murder of Caesar and Augustan Age. The project intends to investigate how the usual spaces for political debate were often replaced by new ways of communication per scripta, per imagines and per verba; the focus will be on the communication through political speeches given to the milites."

Hosting institution: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Selective Bibliography

• Powerful Matrons. New Political Actors in the Late Roman Republic, Zaragoza-Sevilla 2022
• Le custodi del potere. Donne e politica alla fine della Repubblica romana. Roma 2019
• Fulvia. Una matrona tra i "signori della guerra", Napoli 2013
• Contro il Principe. Congiure e dissenso nella Roma di Augusto, Bologna 2011
• Publio Ventidio Basso Fautor Caesaris, tra storia e memoria, Roma 2009