乐播传媒

About

Ph.D. Cornell University, Classical Archaeology, 2019
M.A. McMaster University, Classics, 2012
B.A. McMaster University, Classics (Honors), 2010

Liana Brent specializes in the material and social histories of ordinary individuals in the ancient world. Her research interests include Roman burial practices, Latin inscriptions, Greek and Roman sculpture, museum practices, and the history of collecting antiquities. At 乐播传媒 College, Liana teaches courses on Greek and Roman Archaeology, Slavery, Death and Burial, a seminar on Pompeii, as well as Latin at all levels. In 2025, she taught an off-campus short term course, The Layers of Rome, which traveled to Italy for three weeks.

Liana is currently working on a monograph, Corporeal Connections in Roman Burial Practices, which explores ongoing interactions between the living and the dead in Roman Italy. This research is supported by a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship from Harvard University, so Liana will be on leave for the academic year 2026-2027. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Proceedings of the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, and in various edited volumes published by Cambridge, Brill, De Gruyter, and Edipuglia.

Before arriving at 乐播传媒 College, Liana was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Kenyon College in Ohio (2020-2023), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020), and she held a two-year pre-doctoral Rome Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2017-2019). In addition to her scholarly interests, Liana loves kayaking and hiking. In 2019 she hiked the Via Appia Antica (an ancient Roman road), which stretched for 350 miles from Rome to Brindisi!

Publications:

Brent, L. Forthcoming 2026. 鈥淕rave Robbing in the Vagnari Cemetery,鈥� in Grave Robbing in Ancient Rome and Beyond, edited by C. Murer, 348鈥�369. De Gruyter.

Brent, L. and T. Prowse. 2026. 鈥淩ural Roman Burials,鈥� in Roman Rural Archaeology: Society, Economy and Culture, edited by G. Tol and A. Van Oyen, 137-153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brent, L. 2024. 鈥淒rinking with the Dead: Libation Conduits from Rome鈥檚 Columbaria to the Cortile at the American Academy in Rome.鈥� Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 69: 153鈥�179.

Brent, L. and T. Prowse. 2024. 鈥淩ural Labour and Identity at Vagnari in Southern Italy,鈥� in Valuing Labour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by M. Flohr and K. Bowes. Mnemosyne Supplement 481, 264鈥�286. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Brent, L. 2022. 鈥淭he Via Appia is Easiest if Taken Slowly.鈥� In Ways of Walking, edited by A. De Forest, 108鈥�122, New Door Books.

Brent, L. 2020. 鈥淪ealed and Revealed: Roman Grave-opening Practices.鈥� Journal of Roman Archaeology 33: 129鈥�146.

Brent, L. 2020. 鈥淔laming Torches: The Materiality of Fire and Flames on Roman Cinerary Urns,鈥� in Cultures of Stones: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone, edited by G. Cooney, B. Gilhooley, N. Kelly and S. Mall铆a-Guest, 213鈥�226. Leiden: Sidestone Press.

Brent, L. 2017. 鈥淒isturbed, Damaged and Disarticulated: Grave Reuse in Roman Italy,鈥� in TRAC 2016: Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, edited by R. Cascino, F. De Stefano, A. Lepone and C.M. Marchetti, 37鈥�50. Rome: Edizioni Quasar.

Brent, L. and T. Prowse. 2014. 鈥淕rave Goods and Patterns of Distribution in the Vagnari Cemetery,鈥� in Beyond Vagnari: New Themes in the Study of South Italy, edited by A.M. Small, 99鈥�109. Bari: Edipuglia.

Photo by Phyllis Graber Jensen