Questions of identity and the marginalisation of specific groups have become central to both academic and public discourse. Awareness of these concerns is currently increasing in ancient and pre-modern disciplines. Intersectionality, a concept coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) within Black Feminism and Critical Race Theory, offers a valuable framework for understanding how overlapping of aspects of identity – such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and bodily dispositions (e.g., disability, age) – shape individual experiences of privilege and marginalisation. These dynamics unfold on the interpersonal, structural (government, law, education), and socio-spatial (urban form, spatial governance, land control) levels.
While intersectional approaches are well established in the social sciences, their application to ancient and pre-modern contexts remains mostly unexplored. The nature of pre-modern source material – often fragmentary and strongly reflecting elite perspectives – poses specific challenges. This conference aims to bring together scholars working in ancient and pre-modern fields who already engage with intersectionality or seek to explore its potential.
Registration: If you plan to have lunch at the conference, please contact gwenda.bolliger@unibas.ch until 7.6.2026 (otherwise the Caterer will not be able to provide enough food). Otherwise, spontaneous guests are very welcome: The conference is open to the public.
Program Thursday, 11 June 2026
08:45 Arrival
09:00 Welcome and introduction
Keynotes on Intersectional Approaches
09:20 Intersectionality: A Critical Approach to Understand Power Across Time?
– Dr. Claudia Wilopo (University of Bern)
10:20 Response organisers
10:30 Coffee break
10:55 Intersectionality as Analysis of Power: On Archives, Absence, and Historiography
– Dr. des. Jovita dos Santos Pinto (University of Lucerne)
11:55 Response organisers
12:05 General discussion
12:30 Lunch break
Panel 1 “Epistemology, Visibility and Justice”
13:30 Intersectionality Meets Antiquity: Some Epistemological Thoughts
– Prof. Dr. Kordula Schnegg (Innsbruck University)
14:00 Poverty and Power in Ancient Roman Cityscapes: Towards an Intersectional Reading of Urban Spaces
– Sarah Siegenthaler MA (University of Basel)
14:30 Access to Justice and Social Margins in the Roman World
– Dr. Vid Žepič (University of Ljubljana)
15:00 General discussion
15:30 Coffee break
Panel 2 “Gender, Race, and Power”
16:00 Intersections of Oppression: An Ecofeminist Reading of Vergil’s Eclogue 3
– Dr. Tori Lee (Boston University)
16:30 An Intersectional, Black Feminist Analysis of Lucan’s Erictho:
Liminality, Abjection, and Metapoetic Power in Bellum Civile 6
– Antonia Aluko MA (University College London)
17:00 Women Writing to Women: Intersectionality in Private
Letters from Roman Egypt
– Irene Chioni MA (Ghent University)
17:30 General discussion
Program Friday, 12 June 2026
Panel 3 “Politics, Hierarchies and Social Structures”
08:45 Arrival and welcome
09:00 Intersecting Hierarchies in Death: Kinship, Age, and Status in the Highlands of Middle and Neo-Elamite Lahsavareh Cemetery in Iran
– Mahsa Najafi MA (Independent Researcher)
09:30 Non-Combatants in Ancient Egyptian Warfare: An Intersectional Approach
– Dr. Uroš Matić (University of Graz)
10:00 Coffee break
10:30 Constructing the Civic Body: Propaganda, Identity, and
Marginalisation in Fifth-Century Athens
– Michelle Musolino MA (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
11:00 Meetings at Intersections? Intersectionality as an Analytical Tool for Understanding Ancient Associations and polis Society
– Maria Janosch MA (Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg)
11:30 General discussion
12:00 Lunch break
Panel 4 “Status, Identity, and Pedagogy”
13:00 The Identities of Enslaved Persons as Expressed on Dedicatory Inscriptions in Roman Samnium, Picenum, Umbria, and Etruria (Regiones IV, V, VI, and VII)
– Ethan Bragg Rummel MA (University of Crete)
13:30 At the Intersection of Gender, Social Status and Prestige: The Case of the Imperial Freedwomen in Ancient Roman Society
– Dr. Davide Trivellato (University of Crete)
14:00 Intersectionality as a Paradigm for a Renewed Medievalist Didactics
– Dr. Julian Happes (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg)
14:30 General discussion
15:00 Coffee break
15:30 Final discussion
Veranstaltungsort
Zusätzliche Informationen
Kosten
