Ms Jana Mauri Marlborough (MSt (Oxon), MA (St Andrews))

Thesis title: To have and to be: How the legal concept of peculium shaped Roman practices of slavery

Biography

Background

I am a third year PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh Law School, supervised by Professor Paul du Plessis and Doctor Kim Czajkowski (HCA). I hold an MA (Hons) in Ancient History from the University of St Andrews (2023) and an MSt in Roman History from Regent's Park College, University of Oxford (2024), where I read Roman Law. 

 

Qualifications

Master of Studies, MSt Roman History, University of Oxford

Award Date: 15 Jul 2024

Master of Arts, MA (Hons) Ancient History, University of St Andrews

Award Date: 16 Jun 2023

Responsibilities & affiliations

Student Representative - Centre for Legal History

Undergraduate teaching

Undergraduate Modules Taught at the University of St Andrews School of Classics:

  • AN1003 - Ancient Empires
  • AN2004 - Ancient Societies: Gender, Ethnicity, and Inequality in the Ancient World 
  • CL1005 - Images of Augustan Rome

Research summary

My doctoral research examines the peculium, a Roman legal device that allowed persons without legal personality to hold property, across slave systems that received it and those that did not. I ask whether the Roman legal inheritance of the Luso-Iberian colonies made access to property, and through it manumission, more readily available to slaves than in systems where Roman law was not inherited. My goal is to establish the limits within which legal frameworks regulating slave property operated, and their role in shaping the strategies enslavers used to exploit slaves beyond the extraction of their labour.

Current research interests

Roman Law, Slavery (Ancient and Modern), Comparative Historical Analysis, Comparative Law.

Affiliated research centres

Invited speaker

  • Classics Conference - September 2026 - High School of Dundee 

Organiser

  • Classical Association Conference - July 2025 - University of St Andrews 

Papers delivered

  • Symposium Vesuvianum - October 2026 - Villa Vergiliana 
  • Disabilities and Women in Ancient Rome - May 2026 - University of Helsinki 
  • Oxford Princeton Seminar - January 2024 - University of Oxford 
This article was published on