Dr Matthew Hewitt

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Classics

Biography

Background

I am an historian of ancient Greece, with a focus on slavery and social history. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the UKRI/ERC-funded project Class Struggle in Ancient Greek Democracy here at the University of Edinburgh. I was previously a Junior Fellow with the Turin Humanities Programme (2023-2025), working on the project Slavery, Ethnicity and Race in the Ancient Mediterranean. After obtaining a BA (Hons) in Ancient History from the University of Manchester, I moved to the University of Oxford to complete an MPhil and stayed on for the DPhil, which I completed in 2023.

Qualifications

2023 - DPhil Ancient History (Oxford)

2020 - MPhil Greek and Roman History (Oxford)

2018 - BA (Hons) Ancient History (Manchester)

Research summary

Greek History (Classical & Hellenistic); slavery & manumission; social history; Greek epigraphy

Current research interests

Until now, the bulk of my research has been centred on Greek manumission (the freeing of enslaved people), its social contexts and consequences, and especially the nature of our evidence for this phenomenon. I am currently working on turning my doctoral thesis ‘Inscribing Manumission in the Hellenistic World’ into a monograph. This book will be an in-depth study of the peculiar epigraphic habit – which took hold primarily in the central and northern Greek mainland from the late third-century BCE – of publicly inscribing acts of manumission in sanctuaries. The book aims at a deeper understanding of the function of these monuments in the context of the communities which produced them. My new project (‘Investigating the intersection of class and status in Hellenistic democracy’) will challenge the traditional preference for status as the principal – if not only – analytical lens through which to view the social dynamics of Hellenistic democracies. I argue that an analysis which accounts for class relations constitutes a necessary supplement to more traditional institutional approaches. Of particular interest will be those moments in which rigid status boundaries break down as the interests of the enslaved, and formerly enslaved – about whose existence we have a great deal of evidence but who often disappear from view – converged with those of poor citizens. More generally, I am interested in the relationship between the social realities of inequality and exploitation on the one hand, and ideologies of identity and difference on the other. My work makes particular use of inscriptions for understanding Greek social history.

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