The University of Texas at Austin

Faculty Member, Classics

Other Affiliations: University of Gothenburg, Dept of historical studies
Swedish Institute in Rome, Classical archaeology and ancient history

Research Fellow

College of Liberal Arts

About

MY MAIN INTERESTS ARE PRE-ROMAN (ETRUSCAN AND ITALIC) ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY, ANCIENT AND NEOCLASSICAL ENGRAVED GEMS, HISTORY OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY OF COLLECTING, AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY (ESPECIALLY GERMAN AND FRENCH)

My PhD dissertation (Göteborg 2005) was on late Etrusco-Italic engraved gems and sealstones, more precisely the so-called a globolo scarabs, the majority of which were produced in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. It is now out of print, but a much enlarged version of it covering the whole period of gem engraving in Central Italy, 6th to 1st c. BCE, will hopefully be available sometime in the near future.

In recent years I've become more and more interested in the history of scholarship and collecting, especially 18th- and 19th-century Germany.

I am currently working on three major research projects:

(1. history of classical archaeology) a book on the German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler (1853-1907), sponsored by the Swedish Research Council 2010-2013

(2. history of collecting) a catalogue of 18th- and early 19th-century dactyliothecae and gem casts in the collection of the University of Texas at Austin. THis is a major collection with c. 10 000 gem casts. An article outlining the very interesting history of this collection will be submitted to the Journal of the History of Collections, the catalogue will be available online as a fully searchable illustrated electronic resource.

(3. the engraved gems of pre-Roman Italy) a corpus of Etruscan and Italic engraved gems, 6th to 1st c. BCE, sponsored by the Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Enbom Fund). It will be published together with an enlarged version of my PhD dissertation. Hopefully it will be ready for publication in late 2013 or 2014.

In addition, I'm trying to turn a longer article manuscript on 18th-century books on engraved gems into a monograph. It will be a sort of general history of scholarship and collecting, focusing on the work of Ph. von Stosch, P.J. Mariette, A.F. Gori and J.J. Winckelmann.

I am also interested in the use of ancient mythological themes in the French Baroque operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully & Philippe Quinault.

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