LatinNow team-led academic discussions
Panel at Roman Archaeology Conference: Studying instrumenta scriptoria: the social value of writing equipment (Edinburgh, 12–14 April 2018)
Workshop 1: Language death and survival in the north-western provinces (All Souls College, Oxford, 17-18 September 2018)
International Symposium: Learning scripts, forgetting scripts. New approaches to the history of writing in the Roman West (Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, 8-9 November 2018)
Workshop 2: Thematic issues in the Latinization of the north-western provinces (All Souls College, Oxford, 9-10 April 2019)
Panel at FIEC/CA Conference: Ancient Sociolinguistics (London, July 2019)
Quinquennial Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy: Presentation of final project outputs (Bordeaux, 29 August-2 September 2022)
LatinNow in Schools and Museums – we can come to you!
The LatinNow team offer a range of school- and museum-based activities suitable for different age groups (see our “menu” below). Here are some of the most popular:
Curses! Curses! How to Curse like a Roman
This hands-on introduction to Roman handwriting and Roman Curse tablets was debuted at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum’s after-hours DEADFriday Spellbound event, followed by a Family Discovery Day at the University of Nottingham, two in-school sessions at the Iris Classics Centre at the Cheney School in Oxford, and in person and, during COVID, online appearances at the History and Archaeology Festival at Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts. We also produced the session in 6 languages to take it on tour with us on our VOCES POPVLI Touring Exhibition.
Using rainbow scratch-paper and a wooden stylus, we offer the chance to write a curse using the Roman handwriting form we call Old Roman Cursive, and dedicate it in our portable shrine to the goddess Sulis. Not only does the session introduce some important themes in ancient literacy, but it also raises some interesting questions about Roman beliefs and behaviour!
If you’d like to deliver this session yourself, you can download our multilingual teacher’s packs and worksheets on our Teaching and Learning page.
Decode a Roman Military Message!
Another other popular session has been our military ‘codebreaking’ for Primary school pupils, an activity that was successfully road-tested by the LatinNow team on 250 children and their parents for the IntoUniversity educational access programme. It was later fine-tuned with the help of the pupils at St Ebbes Primary in Oxford, before being taken to Europe, where it was delivered to children in France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
This session, focusses on the different languages spoken in the empire and how the Roman army sent its messages, ends with a race to translate a secret message and save a Roman legion from an attack from marauding Britons.
You can find the worksheet for this learning activity in 6 languages on our Teaching and Learning page.
Our Outreach Menu
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like to hear more about LatinNow. We offer a range of talks and activities, some of which can be found here:
LatinNow Outreach Events Menu 2020
For booking enquiries, please email latinnow@nottingham.ac.uk.