2021 CACHE Postdoctoral Research Fellow Janet Wade

CACHE welcomes Dr Janet Wade as one of our 2021 Postdoctoral Research Fellows. Janet is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University whose research traverses the maritime and landscape archaeology of the ancient Roman world and their modern reception.

As a CACHE Fellow, Janet is continuing a research project concerning the changing condition of ancient Roman roads and their surrounding environs over the last century. Through the juxtaposition of archival material with modern photographs and observation, she is revealing the level of destruction and preservation that has impacted Italy’s cultural heritage over the past century of urban expansion, agricultural developments, and warfare. Janet is utilising the late 19th and early 20th century photographic and documentary archives of Thomas Ashby, archaeologist and Director of the British School at Rome from 1906–1925. Ashby and his colleagues, including R. A. L. Fell, Peter Paul Mackey, Robert Gardner, Dora Bulwer, and Agnes Bulwer, recorded the remains of ancient roads and infrastructure throughout Italy in a period just prior to the start of immense change to the country’s landscape. The condition of these roads in Ashby’s time, in particular the Via Flaminia, will be compared to their current state to demonstrate the impact of the intervening decades. By creating an updated record of key areas of the Roman road network, Janet aims to provide modern communities with a tangible link to their recent and ancient past, and to encourage the conservation of cultural heritage at risk. The results of her work will be explored through publications and a future photographic exhibition.

Janet commenced this project while undertaking a Macquarie Gale–British School at Rome Fellowship in 2018 and a British School at Rome Library and Archive Award in 2020. Additionally, she was awarded an Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship this year to continue her work.

Her archival research broadens out from her doctoral studies on the maritime culture of the eastern Roman empire in Late Antiquity, completed at Macquarie University in 2018. In this field, Janet taught subjects for the Department of Ancient History (now the Department of History and Archaeology) from 2013–2014 and convened the Annual Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association in 2014 and 2018. She also has a background in IT as a Software Test Analyst and in university administration as a Higher Degree Research officer.

We are excited to be supporting Janet in her work towards engaging contemporary communities with their ancient and modern history!

For more information about her research and publications, see her Macquarie University and Academia profiles and follow her on Twitter.

Top: Janet Wade at the British School at Rome. Credit: Antonio Palmieri. Middle left: Janet at the Ponte Fonnaia arch along the Via Flaminia. Middle right: Janet documenting a Roman arch at Narni. Bottom: Janet and Macquarie University postgraduate student Nicole Moffatt at the forum along the Via Flaminia at Carsulae.