Thea Lawrence
Post-doctoral researcher
SHORT PROFILE
Thea Lawrence is a cultural historian and scholar of Latin literature, specialising in the history of the senses, gender, and the body in Republican and Imperial Rome. Her work integrates Greco-Roman literature, ancient medicine, cultural and social history, and material culture to explore ancient perceptions and sensory interactions with different bodies.
Her doctoral thesis, “Odour, Perfume, and the Female Body in Ancient Rome” (University of Nottingham, 2019), argued that a multisensory perspective on the ancient body illuminates Roman society and deepens our understanding of patriarchy, misogyny, and their enduring legacy. Her published work includes “Breastmilk, Breastfeeding and the Female Body in Early Imperial Rome” (2021), and she is currently revising her doctoral thesis for publication.
Alongside her research, Thea has a keen interest in teaching and outreach. She taught at the University of Nottingham (2016-2020) and the University of Lincoln (2020-2022), worked with the University of Nottingham Museum’s school outreach programme, and run a workshop for the Nottingham Contemporary art gallery as part of their exhibition “The House of Fame” by groundbreaking feminist artist Linder. Following a role in Education and Student Experience at the University of Nottingham (2023-2025), she is excited to return to academia.
PUBLICATIONS
- MONOGRAPHS
Forthcoming: Odour, Perfume, and the Female Body in Ancient Rome.
- CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES
“Incense, perfume, incest and (im)pietas: myrrh, religion and gender in the Roman world”, in Bradley, M., Grand-Clément, A., Rendu-Loisel, A.-C., Vincent, A. (eds) Sensing Divinity: Incense, Religion and the Ancient Sensorium, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
2021: “Breastmilk, Breastfeeding and the Female Body in Early Imperial Rome”, in M. Bradley, V. Leonard, L. Totelin (eds.) Bodily Fluids/Fluid Bodies in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Routledge, 224-239.
- ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
2014: ‘The Laudatio Turiae: A Source for Roman Political and Social History’, Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics 3(1).
- PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
2018-2021: Museum Learning and Outreach Facilitator, University of Nottingham Museum
2018: Study Session, “Incense, perfume, incest and (im)pietas”, Nottingham Contemporary. Part of the series “A Darkened Room: On Feminism, Rituals, Death and the Occult”, in conjunction with the exhibition “The House of Fame” by Linder.
ERC PROJECT
Female Group Minds and Socio-Political Agency in Roman Narrative
Focusing primarily on Latin literature from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, this project explores the ways in which female group minds and collective actions shape narratives, demand public visibility and recognition, and exert social and political power. It considers the ways in which writers ascribe consciousness, emotion, and agency to a multiplicity of varied and changing female groups, arguing that the ways in which women are depicted as cognitive units can shed new light on Classical patriarchal understandings of female thought, emotion, and agency.
A central case study will be Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, where women often act as catalysts for social change. The project will explore how groups such as the Sabine Women and the protestors against the Lex Oppia are portrayed as collective minds capable of socio-political agency in male-dominated spaces. The Sabine Women’s battlefield intervention to restore peace contrasts with the divergent portrayals of protesting women attributed by Livy to Cato the Elder and Valerius Flaccus, each shaping the collective female psyche to suit political ends. In both instances, however, the shared emotions, goals, and actions of the women enable them to bring about their desired ends, in defiance of opposing male groups.
Female collective action in Livy is often seen as a temporary upheaval, followed by the dissolution of the united female group into separate domestic spheres. This project will interrogate whether such groups should in fact be seen as temporary aberrations, or whether the narrative also points towards longer-lasting, stable female collectives that can function as part of a healthy social ecosystem. It will explore how narratives engage with or obscure the very real groups that functioned within Roman society, from cooperative networks of Roman matronae to female-dominated religious groups, and beyond.
Given their social power, it unsurprising that female collective cognition and action is often depicted as a threat. Within Livy we see the mass female poisoning plot of 332 BCE, as well as the purging of the Cult of Bacchus in 186 BCE; both instances suggesting a radical and disruptive intermentality amongst Rome’s women. Elsewhere, writers like Pliny the Elder blame mass female consumer behaviour for significant socio-economic ills, and satirists such as Juvenal paint contemporary women as an interchangeable conglomerate of licentious drunkards. The out-of-control female group could corrupt and effeminise others in a kind of cognitive contagion, absorbing other women.
Last Updated on December 8, 2025