Caroline Barron is Assistant Professor in Classics (Roman History) in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is an ancient historian with a research interest in the cultural and historical significance of Latin epigraphy from antiquity to the present day. She is interested in how people—both ancient and modern—responded to Latin inscriptions, how their texts were composed and read, and what epigraphy contributed to the landscape of antiquity.
Caroline’s research falls into two main strands: the importance of epigraphy and epigraphic text in the Roman world, and how those texts were used by early modern societies to reconstruct a vision of the ancient past. Her research asks what inscriptions meant to those who made and engaged with them, how the materiality of inscriptions has been used to contribute to how we understand their messages, and the rationale behind why certain epigraphic texts continue to speak to us today. Caroline’s approach is interdisciplinary, combining ancient history with the study of material culture and digital epigraphy. She has been involved with Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania since 2009, when she joined the digital edition as a Research Assistant, returning as a co-author of IRT2021 and editor of the Neo-Punic material. Caroline also worked on IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea at KCL and is on the editorial committee for a second, digital edition of Roman Statutes, which is coordinated through the University of Chicago.
Her most recent project is concerned with epigraphic forgery in the eighteenth century, bringing together the fields of epigraphy, palaeography, Grand Tour studies and the history of collecting.