PlanningxChange 110: Professor Tim Parkin - The Romans and their cities

Planning XChange

In PX110, our interview guest is Professor Tim Parkin, we talk all things Roman particularly their city life.

Tim Parkin joined the Classics and Archaeology department at the University of Melbourne in 2018 as the inaugural Elizabeth and James Tatoulis Chair in Classics. Before this he had spent over 11 years as Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester (UK).

Tim is a New Zealander by birth who was awarded a D.Phil. at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and who, since 1989, has worked in universities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, as well as spending over a year in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow. His teaching covers both Greek and Roman history and classical languages. His main research is in ancient history, particularly Roman social, cultural, and demographic history. Among his publications are Demography and Roman Society (1992), Old Age in the Roman World: A Social and Cultural History (2003), Roman Social History: A Sourcebook (2007), and The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (2014). Tim is currently working primarily on ancient sexual health, in particular sexually transmitted diseases, as well as co-editing a cultural history of old age from antiquity to the current day and a BICS supplement on domestic violence in the Roman world, and working on papers on elders in the early Christian church and the demographic realities of the ancient countryside. He is currently supervising research students in a wide range of topics including feminist readings of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the geographical writings of Solinus, concepts of revenge in the Roman world, and the uses of food, magic and drugs in the works of Apuleius. In 2023 he continues in his role as Deputy Head of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and he takes on a new role as Deputy Associate Dean (Partnerships) in the Faculty of Arts. He is also Honorary President of the Classical Association of Victoria.

In podcast extra / culture corner Tim recommends the NZ actor Sam Neil’s Memoir ‘Did I Ever Tell You This?’ https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/did-i-ever-tell-you-this. Tim also recommends ‘Kellis: A Roman - Period Village in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis’ https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/2749916/Kellis-A-Roman-Period-Village-in-Egypts-Dakhleh-Oasis.pdf.

Jess recommends ‘Dead Tide’ by Fiona Mcintosh https://www.penguin.com.au/books/dead-tide-9781761344633

Pete recommends ‘My father and me’ by Nick Broomfield. https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/my-father-me-nick-maurice-broomfield-working-class-photographer-life Also the work of Maurice Broomfield recognised by the V & A in the book ‘Maurice Broomfield Industrial Sublime’ https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/maurice-broomfield-industrial-sublime (available in many libraries). See also https://mauricebroomfield.photography

Audio production by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 30 October 2023.