Intersectionality in Ancient and Pre-Modern Contexts. Considering Aspects of Privilege and Marginalisation

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.

Programm

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