Professor Valentina Arena

Academic Background and Previous Positions

Valentina Arena studied at the University of Florence and University College London, where she was Professor of Ancient History. In 2024 she was appointed to the Camden Professorship in Ancient History at Oxford University.

Research Interests

Professor Arena’s work focuses on the history of Roman politics, ancient ideas and ancient political thought as well as the wider intellectual landscape of the Roman Republic. She is also interested in the production of knowledge, ancient philosophy of language, and Roman constitutionalism. Her current work, generously supported by the ERC, focuses on Roman Republican antiquarianism.

Publications

Valentina is the author of Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the late Roman Republic and the editor of Liberty: an Ancient Concept for the Contemporary World. She has co-edited volumes on Varro and the antiquarian tradition (Varronian Moments, with F. Mac Góráin; Reconstructing the Republic: Varro and Imperial Authors, with Giorgio Piras) as well as on Roman political culture (Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic, with Jonathan Prag). She is currently co-editing the first volume of the Cambridge History of Democracy. Valentina is the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded research project Ordering, Constructing, Empowering: Fragments of the Roman Republican Antiquarians (FRRAnt).