Gavin Kelly is Professor of Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Edinburgh, where he has taught since 2005. His central aim for the project is to produce new editions of Ammianus Marcellinus and Festus, prior to which he will finalise a new English translation of Ammianus for the Landmark series in collaboration with Michael Kulikowski.
Justin Stover is Professor of Medieval Latin at the University of Edinburgh and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. For the project he will focus on editions of the Historia Augusta and Aurelius Victor.
George Woudhuysen is an Associate Professor in Roman History at the University of Nottingham and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He will focus on naming practices in the historians, and will also produce an annotated translation of Victor jointly with Stover.
Agnese Bargagna is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project. A graduate of the University of Pisa, she obtained her joint Doctoral degree in Classics at the University of Macerata (Italy) and at the Université Paris-Sorbonne in 2020. Her research interests lie mainly in late-antique history and literature, Renaissance reception of Latin historiography, and codicology. As part of the project she will revise her doctoral thesis on the Renaissance manuscripts and reception of Ammianus' Res gestae, and will oversee a comprehensive catalogue of the c. 550 manuscripts transmitting the project's historians.
Veronica Fiscella is a doctoral student in Classics at the University of Edinburgh, funded by a College Research Award; she studied for her BA and MA at the University of Bologna. She is working on the manuscripts of the Historia Augusta and on the lives of the Valeriani and the Gallieni.
Pedro Benedetti is a Postdoctoral fellow at the São Paulo State University Júlio de Mesquita Filho. He holds a doctorate in Social History from the University of São Paulo (2023), a master's degree in Anthropology and History of Antiquity from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2015), a degree in History from the Federal University of Uberlândia (2013). As a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh, he is investigating how Ammianus and Eunapius dealt with the reigns of emperors Valens and Valentinian in their histories.
Thijs Kersten is a postgraduate research student in History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He studied Classics (BA) at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he is currently finishing up a Master's of Research in History. He is joining the project to study two paraphrases of the Historia Augusta, focusing on their relationship to the broader manuscript tradition and modes of engagement with the source material.
At both Edinburgh and Nottingham, we welcome applications from prospective doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars interested in working on topics related to the project. At postdoctoral level both universities support applications for fellowships from the British Academy (Postdoctoral and Newton International), the Leverhulme Trust, and MSCA actions, among others. As a Humboldtian, Gavin Kelly is able to sponsor scholars in Germany in applications for a Feodor Lynen Fellowship. From the 2025-2026 academic year onwards, we will also welcome shorter visits to the project in Edinburgh from interested scholars.
A second postdoc who will focus on Eutropius' history will be appointed for the 2026-2028 academic years.
The Last Historians of Rome project (September 2024-August 2029) is
funded by a Standard Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC), and is led by scholars at the Universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham.
