Ray Laurence
Expert on Roman History and Archaeology
Ray Laurence studied Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Wales and then studied for a PhD at the University of Newcastle. He was a lecturer at the University of Reading until 2005 and then a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. In April 2010, he takes up the post of Professor in Roman History and Archaeology at the University of Kent.
His main interests lie in finding new approaches and new ways to understand Roman society; whilst at the same time he can offer new ways of presenting the more familiar areas – such as the site of Pompeii. His work is characterised by innovation that looks to see things differently, and to ensure that the study of Roman society remains in step with developments in other academic disciplines. He is intolerant of academics that reproduce the ideas of others in books with virtually no explanations of their own.
His first book Roman Pompeii: Space and Society examined the workings of the famous city and set out a new vision of the organisation of activities within the city. From Pompeii, he moved onto the study of the relationships between cities and the role of Roman roads in shaping the landscape – producing his second book The Roads of Roman Italy: Mobility and Cultural Change. In a shift of direction at the end of the 1990s, he began to collaborate with Mary Harlow to produce a new understanding of Roman society by focusing on the study of human ageing. This work can be seen in Growing Up and Growing Old in Ancient Rome: A Life Course Approach. After this, it was back to Pompeii in the company of Alex Butterworth to produce Pompeii: the Living City (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 2005) a blend of fiction and non-fiction that sought to bring Pompeii to life for the general reader that was awarded the Longman-History Today Next Generation Prize in 2006. Arising from this work was a re-interpretation of the role of pleasure in the first century AD in Roman Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome.
He lives is London with his wife and two sons.
Finally, maybe most importantly, he is dyslexic.
