Dr Pablo Rojas (BA, MA, MPhil, PhD)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Biography

Background

I joined the University of Edinburgh as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID-Chile), after graduating with an MPhil and a PhD in Classics from the University of St Andrews. Before coming to the United Kingdom, I graduated with a BA in History and an MA in Classical Studies in my home country, and completed an intensive, year-long course in classical languages in Rome.

Qualifications

PhD in Classics (University of St Andrews, UK)

MPhil in Classics (University of St Andrews, UK)

MA in Classical Studies (Centre of Classical Studies, Chile)

BA in History (Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile)

Research summary

I am a Latinist specialising in Roman historical writing, with a keen research interest in the history of Roman law. My training in literary criticism and traditional methodologies of classical philology has also prompted a profound interest in the history of classical scholarship and the evolving nature of Classics as a discipline.

My research is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on literary texts to investigate Roman legal culture from a different perspective to that offered by traditional legal sources. In my PhD thesis, I analysed Tacitus’ views on the law and the narrative function of law-related episodes in the Annals (the abstract can be found here). I am currently transforming my doctoral thesis into a book, provisionally titled Law and Empire in Tacitus’ Annals.

My previous work established the foundations for my postdoctoral research here at the University of Edinburgh. My project 'Trial Scenes in Roman Historiography' examines the literary strategies employed by the Roman historians Livy and Curtius Rufus when constructing and embedding trial scenes in their historiographical narratives.

Papers delivered

 

‘Geographic, Strategic and Tactical Space: Caesarian Spatial Thinking in Tacitus' Agricola’ at the Classics Research Seminar, University of Edinburgh – UK (March 2024).

 

‘Tacitus on Jurists: Archetypes of Jurisprudence in the Early Roman Empire’ at the Research Workshop, Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research, University of St Andrews – UK (May 2023).

 

‘Tiberius and the Law in Tacitus’ Annals’ at the Classics PG Work-in-Progress, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London – UK (October 2022).

 

‘Gaius Cassius Longinus, a Jurist in Politics’ at the Tübingen & St Andrews PG Workshop, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen – Germany (June 2022).

 

‘The Trial Scene of Valerius Asiaticus in Tacitus’ Annals’ at the Classics PG Research Seminar, University of St Andrews – UK (March 2022).

 

‘Death Narratives and the Politics of Exemplarity in Imperial Rome’ at the Workshop: Imperial Power, Imperial Truth, University of Bristol – UK (October 2019).

 

‘Genre, Structure, and Style: Notes to Tacitus’ Agricola’ (in Spanish) at the Tradition in Translation Colloquium, Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Ediciones Tácitas, Chile (July 2015).

 

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