Professor Lucy Grig (BA, MA, PhD)

Professor of the History of Late Antiquity

Biography

Background

I was an undergraduate in History at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where my studies took me from classical Athens to modern Europe. I then took my MA in Medieval Studies at the University of York but decided to return to Cambridge for my PhD, this time in the Classics Faculty, finding my natural home in the world of Late Antiquity. I taught at the University of Reading from 2000-1 and from 2002-4, while I was lucky enough to be Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome in 2001-2. I came to Edinburgh as a Lecturer in 2004, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Professor in 2024.  In this time I have  enjoyed teaching ancient history at all levels, with occasional forays into other areas of Classics.  I have particularly enjoyed developing the field of Late Antiquity, including in combination with Byzantine and early Islamic studies.  Outside the office, as well as enjoying my adopted Scottish homeland I am always keen to spend more time in the more southern former territories of the Roman Empire. I have three children, who have all been dragged to ancient sites throughout their formative years, and a noisy cat called Hamish, who hasn't.

Responsibilities & affiliations

At the University of Edinburgh I am co-director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies. I am Editor-in-Chief of the  Oxford Classical Dictionary and a member of the editorial board of the journal 'Early Medieval Europe'.

 

Undergraduate teaching

  • Roman World 1A and !B
  • Transformation of the Roman World, ca. 200-800:  Towards Byzantium and the Early Medieval West
  • The World of St Augustine (Honours)
  • Race and Ethnicity in the Roman World (Honours)
  • Making Saints: Hagiography and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Honours)
  • Popular Culture in the Ancient World (Honours)

Postgraduate teaching

  • Popular Culture in the Roman World (Online)
  • A Topic in Late Antique and Byzantine History: Making Saints
  • A Topic in Late Antique and Byzantine History: Cultural History of the Late Antique Latin West

 

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type

Lazzoni, Clara - PhD - Seeing texts, reading images: approach to late antique concrete poetry based on Optatian. - Secondary 

Dax, Joseph- PhD- Crisis and Community in Southern Gaul 406-455 - Primary.

Xie, Sisi- PhD- Fire Deities and Fire Veneration in the Western Roman Empire.-Lead, joint.

 

Past PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type

Cleary, Nicole - PhD - Jerome on the attack - Joint  - awarded 2015

Imrie, Alex - MScR - Roman Numismatics - Secondary - awarded 2011

Imrie, Alex - PhD - Caracalla and the Constitutio Antoniniana  - Secondary - awarded 2015

Ingle, Gabriela - PhD - The significance of dining in late Roman and early Christian funerary rites and tomb decoration - Primary - 2017

John, Alison - PhD- Learning and power: a cultural history of education in Late Antique Gaul - Secondary - awarded 2018

Lauritsen, Taylor - PhD - Doors and Domestic Space at Pompeii - Secondary - awarded 2012

Penn, Tim - PhD - Beyond the grace: the funerary landscapes of the Italian peninsula, ca. 1-700 CE - Secondary - 2022

Sandon, Tatjana - PhD - The freedwoman in the Roman world: the evidence of the Latin inscriptions - Secondary - awarded 2017

Smith, Natalie - PhD  - Production of Christian sacred space in fourth-century Jerusalem - Secondary  - awarded 2022

Thorp, Thaddeus - Earning the fruits of honour: a study of social mobility among the freeborn sub-elite in the Roman West - Secondary - awarded 2022

Thostenson, Kathryn -  PhD - Sexed, not sexual bodies: Tertullian's Anthropology of Sexual Difference - Primary - awarded 2019

Tsartsidis, Thomas - PhD - Prudentius Peristephanon 10  - Secondary - awarded 2017

Washington, Belinda - PhD - Empresses in the late Roman world - Secondary - awarded 2016

Bersani, Beatrice - The colours of God: Polychromatic imagery for the divine in late antique Latin poetry. secondary - awarded 2025

Homewood, Murdo - The imagery of Illness and Healing in in Augustine's Sermones ad populum. Primary - awarded 2026

Research summary

Places: 

  • Europe
  • Mediterranean
  • Near East

Themes: 

  • Ancient Civilisations
  • Culture
  • Gender
  • Language & Literature
  • Material Culture
  • Religion
  • Society

Periods: 

  • Antiquity
  • Medieval

Research interests

I am a historian of the society, culture and religion of  the Roman world, with a particular focus on Late Antiquity. My research takes in both literary and material culture from across the Mediterranean world (for instance I have published on poetry and glassware, sermons and paintings).

Current research interests

I am currently beginning a major new project on fiction in Latin Late Antiquity, one that is both a history of fiction and a history of the transformations of the period as seen through this period. This comprises a number of longstanding interests including hagiography, popular culture and the controversialist, self-publicist and saint Jerome of Stridon. I am also writing on the history of protest and taking part in a large international project on 'Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities' I am one of the co directors of the Edinburgh Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies which brings these fields together at Edinburgh.

Past research interests

Previous work has focused on a number of themes, with reference to both literary and material and visual culture, including - popular culture in the ancient and late ancient world and its role in the transformation of the classical world - urban history, particularly that of the city of Rome in Late Antiquity - the cult of the saints, hagiography and the history of early and late ancient Christianity more widely - southern Gaul in Late Antiquity, including the dominant figure of Caesarius of Arles

Knowledge exchange

I have appeared on 'In Our Time' on BBC Radio 4. on programmes discussing Aesop and the emperor Constantine. I have also appeared on 'Free Thinking' on BBC Radio 3 discussing donkeys (to work out the connection it helps to read Aesop's Fables). Most recently I have returned to the topic of Constantine again, this time on the BBC comedy podcast 'You're Dead to Me'

Affiliated research centres

Project activity

I have recently completed a major research project (part funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship), with the publication of  ‘Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity in Southern Gaul, c. 400-550' (Cambridge University Press, 2024). This books offers a new look at the transformatoin of the classical world in Late Antiquity with a particular focus on southern Gaul, a region rich in both archaeological and literary evidence, and examines its  social, cultural and religious history through the lens of popular culture.

My current research activity builds on my previous work on popular culture, hagiography and the cultural transformations of Late Antiquity, including work on the development of hagiographic fiction and on questions of authority in late antique literature more broadly

Research projects

Watch a short video of Dr Grig speaking about her research interests - Media Hopper

Past project grants

British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2016-17)

The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Dr Lucy Grig.

Books - Authored

Grig, L. (2024) Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity in Southern Gaul, c. 400-550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grig, L. (2004) Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.

Books - Edited

Grig, L. (ed.) (2016) Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139871402

Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds.) (2012) Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press

Articles

Grig, L. (2018) Caesarius of Arles and the campaign against popular culture in late antiquity. Early Medieval Europe, 26(1), pp. 61-81DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12248

Grig, L. (2013) Cities in the ‘long’ Late Antiquity, 2000–2012 – a survey essay. Urban History, 40(3), pp. 554 - 566DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926813000369

Grig, L. (2012) Deconstructing the symbolic city: Jerome as guide to late antique Rome. Papers of the British School at Rome, 80, pp. 125-143DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068246212000074

Grig, L. (2004) Portraits, Pontiffs and the Christianization of Fourth-Century Rome. Papers of the British School at Rome, 72, pp. 203-230

Grig, L. (2002) Torture and Truth in Late Antique Martyrology. Early Medieval Europe, 11, pp. 321-336DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-9462.2002.00114.x

Chapters

Grig, L. (2018) Life and death in Late Antiquity: Religious rituals and popular culture. In: Lössl, J. and J. Nicholas, B. (eds.) A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 455-473

Grig, L. (2017) 'A Popular Culture'. In: Césaire d'Arles et les cinq continents. Venelles: Assocation aux Sources de la Provence, pp. 180-185

Grig, L. (2017) Cultural capital and Christianization: The metrical inscriptions of Late Antique Rome. In: Bolle, K., Machado, C. and Witschel, C. (eds.) The Epigraphic Cultures of Late Antiquity. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 427-447

Grig, L. (2017) Introduction: Approaching popular culture in the ancient world. In: Grig, L. (ed.) Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-36

Grig, L. (2016) Interpreting the Kalends of January: A case study for late antique popular culture?. In: Grig, L. (ed.) Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 237-256

Grig, L. (2013) The Bible in popular and non-literary culture. In: Joachim, S. and Carleton Paget, J. (eds.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to 600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Grig, L. (2013) Approaching popular culture: Singing in the sermons of Caesarius of Arles. In: Studia Patristica: Vol. LXIX - Papers presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011., pp. 197-204

Grig, L. (2012) Competing Capitals, Competing Representations: Late antique cityscapes in words and pictures. In: Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds.) Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 31-52

Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (2012) Introduction: From Rome to Constantinople. In: Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds.) Two Romes. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-30

Grig, L. (2009) Imagining the Capitolium in Late Antiquity. In: Lenski, N. and Cain, A. (eds.) The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity. Ashgate Publishing, pp. 279-291

Grig, L. (2006) Throwing parties for the poor: poverty and splendour in the late antique church. In: Margaret Atkins, R. (ed.) Poverty in the Roman World. Cambridge University Press, pp. 145-161

This article was published on