Simona Martorana

I am Lecturer in Classics at the Australian National University (Canberra), where I have been teaching a variety of courses on ancient languages and culture, including "Continuing Latin" (LATN2119), "Life, Love and Loss in Ancient Greece and Rome" (CLAS3002), and "Rome: Story of an Empire" (CLAS1005). I am the author of Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's Heroides (Cornell University Press, 2024) and the co-editor of Body and Medicine in Latin Poetry (De Gruyter, 2025), which arises from my research network on "Body and Medicine in Latin Poetry": https://bodyandmedicinelatin.weebly.com/. My publications include several articles and book chapters on classical and medieval Latin literature.

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After my B.A. and M.A. at the University of Trento and some work experience in Italy, I moved to Durham, where I completed my Ph.D. in Classics in July 2021. Globetrotter, wisdom seeker, and explorer, I spent some time in Freiburg as an Erasmus student during my B.A., at Columbia University in New York during my M.A., and at Harvard University as a Visiting Fellow. Before starting my job at ANU, I was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Kiel University and the University of Hamburg (2022-24).
 

My main research focus on Latin verse combines philological rigor in attention to the detail of the texts, with contemporary theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to antiquity (gender; posthumanism; environmental and medical humanities; legal theory). As I see 'antiquity' as a fluid concept and think that the margins of the discipline must be expanded to include (supposedly) less canonical texts, I have also focused on Medieval Latin fables. This work culminated in a new critical edition of the Recensio Gallicana of the Romulus (Sismel, 2024). My current research project focuses on "The Diseased Body and the Landscape: Rethinking Human-Environment Interaction within Plague Narratives from the Roman World".

A daughter, a sister, almost a worshipper of Sappho, I have combined my work with my personal history by co-organizing a panel on Sappho at the 13 CCC (Celtic Conference in Classics) in Lyon (July 2022): http://www.celticconferenceinclassics.org/index.php/next-conference. I am now working towards the publication of the conference papers as an edited volume.

See above for my CV and Academia.edu page.