Dr Jack Lennon

I studied Ancient History and Classics at Nottingham and received my PhD in 2011. Before coming to Leicester in 2016 I held positions at Nottingham Kent and University College London. In 2013 I spent time at the British School at Rome as the Mougins Museum Rome Award holder.

I am interested in all aspects of Roman cultural history but have maintained a particular research focus on Roman notions of dirtiness and impurity and the broader themes of stigma and marginalisation in the ancient world. These various themes are currently being brought together in a monograph which explores the role of dirtiness as a form of stigma and contributing factor in the marginalisation of particular groups and professions within ancient Rome.

(2017) ‘Contaminating touch in the Roman world’ in A. Purves (ed.) Touch and the Ancient Senses (Routledge) 121-33.

(2015) ‘Victimarii in Roman religion and society’ Papers of the British School at Rome (83) 65-89.

(2015) ‘Dining and obligation in Valerius Maximus: the case of the sacra mensae’ Classical Quarterly (65.2) 719-31.

(2014) Pollution and Religion in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press Cambridge).

(2012) ‘Pollution religion and society in the Roman world’ in M. Bradley (ed.) Rome Pollution and Propriety: Dirt Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity (Cambridge University Press Cambridge) 43-58.

(2010) ‘Menstrual blood in ancient Rome: an unspeakable impurity?’ Classica et Mediaevalia (61) 71-87. (2010) ‘Jupiter Latiaris and the Taurobolium: inversions of cleansing in Christian polemic’ Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (59.3) 381-384.

(2010) ‘Pollution and ritual impurity in Cicero’s De Domo Sua’ Classical Quarterly (60.2) 427-45."

I am happy to supervise students in most aspects of Republican and early Imperial cultural and political history and I am especially interested the following subject areas:

- Roman religion

- Marginalisation in antiquity

- Ancient magic

I am involved with a wide range of teaching within the School (both campus-based and distance learning) and currently co-ordinate the following modules:

AH1009 - Approaching Ancient Evidence: Roman

AH2023 - The Roman Principate

AH2038 - The Roman Family

AH2041 - Religion in the Roman World

AH3081 - The Fall of the Roman Republic

AH3083 - An Empire Reborn: Justinian and his Age

Roman religion; Roman culture and society; Roman Imperial history.