Work performed and results (* indicates unforeseen major opportunities):
1. 7 books, c. 60 articles/book chapters/conference proceedings chapters.
2. Manual of Roman Everyday Writing in two ebook volumes.
3. Cleaned, deduplicated and added metadata to existing dataset to create new 140,000 record epigraphic database.
4. Worked with Vindolanda Trust and British Museum to use RTI to read the writing on stylus tablets.*
5. Worked on unpublished graffiti on ceramic from Lyon.*
6. Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online finalized with 16,000 records made public.
7. Creation of Open Access public webGIS presenting project data coordinated with that of collaborating projects.
8. 2 international workshops on Latinization: one on the later and post-Roman provinces and another on social factors in Latinization.
9. International panel on writing equipment at the Roman Archaeology Conference in Edinburgh.
10. Co-hosted and delivered talks at a workshop on Digital approaches to the western provinces at the Institute for Classical Studies, London.
11. Co-hosted and delivered papers at a workshop on scripts at Las Palmas.
12. Hosted samian ware event in Oxford, including papers and a two-day practical workshop.
13. Panel with papers by team members on ancient sociolinguistics at FIEC/CA, London.
14. Hosted British Epigraphy Society Meeting.
15. Organized conference on ‘Wax Tablets through Time and Space’.
16. Presentation of final results of the project at the quinquennial congress of epigraphy in Bordeaux.
17. Over 70 papers delivered, including 5 keynotes.
18. Completion of a PhD thesis on the nature of Latin in Roman Britain.
19. Advanced training in EpiDoc, RTI, GIS delivered across Europe.
20. New international research collaborations. Hosted academic visitors, including post-doctoral fellows and doctoral students.*
21. 6-language, 6-country touring exhibition.
22. Extensive outreach and multilingual teaching materials.
23. All post-docs on the team have gone on to Faculty or research project jobs. Mullen, Estarán and Vanderbilt have won prizes, as has the project as a whole.
24. Dissemination via website, Twitter, popularizing articles, TV, YouTube.
Overview
The LatinNow team, through several books, particularly the trilogy of Open Access Oxford University Press volumes (Social factors in the Latinization of the Roman West (Mullen 2023), Languages and Communities in the later-Roman and post-imperial western provinces (Mullen and Woudhuysen 2024) and Latinization, local languages and literacies in the Roman West (Mullen and Willi 2024)) and nearly 60 other publications, has written a social history of the Latinization of the western provinces and the spread of literacy. We have developed a novel multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary methodology and have created a research momentum which has generated new research ideas and reanimated work on unpublished museum collections. We have shared our multi-million data point empirical basis, combining a 140,000 record epigraphic dataset, plus multiple complementary datasets from collaborating projects, through a public webGIS. The website Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online now contains every published Roman inscription from the province of Britannia and is being used to transform the teaching of Ancient History in the UK. We have undertaken knowledge exchange with researchers and heritage workers through over 100 conferences, talks, seminars, workshops and training sessions across Europe, America and Asia. We reached thousands with our award-winning museum and schools outreach, which included a 6-language, 6-country European touring exhibition. Our research has inspired several new funded projects, and created a research network which will continue to promote our state-of-the-art research, knowledge exchange and impact across Europe and beyond.
