Ben Salisbury

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology
Doctoral Researcher

Contact details

Email: bxs834@student.bham.ac.uk

Title of thesis: Before Public Opinion: The Role of Tribunes of the Plebs in Creating, Manipulating, and Responding to Popular Sentiment, c. 70 - 49 BC

Supervisor: Dr Henriette van der Blom and Dr Hannah Cornwell

Qualifications

BA (Hons) Ancient History, First Class – University of Manchester
MA Classics and Ancient History, Distinction – University of Manchester

Biography

I began an undergraduate degree in Ancient History at the University of Manchester in 2013 and graduated (First Class) in 2016. I remained at the University of Manchester for my Masters degree in Classics & Ancient History (Distinction), which I began in 2016 and finished in 2017. From September 2017 - January 2018, I worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the same institution, teaching on the level 3 module: The Early Roman Republic, alongside my supervisor Dr Peter Morton. I received my Midlands3Cities DTP award in the summer of 2018 and have now taken up my place at the University of Birmingham on a PhD Classics, Ancient History & Archaeology FT course.

Teaching

Seminar Leader in the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology on the Level 2 Module, Age of Cicero.

Doctoral research

PhD title: Before Public Opinion: The Role of Tribunes of the Plebs in Creating, Manipulating, and Responding to Popular Sentiment, c. 70 - 49 BC
Supervisors: Dr Henriette van der Blom and Dr Hannah Cornwell
Course: Classics and Ancient History PhD/MA by Research (On-Campus or by Distance Learning)

Research

My project examines the political dialogue between the Roman electorate and the socio-political elite (tribunes of the plebs), who were elected to act in accordance with their will. I focus on the basic wants, needs, and emotions of the masses at Rome in order to identify and trace the process through which shared or ‘public’ opinions may have developed. The principal aim is to further the idea that the populace at Rome, both as a whole and as subsections, held common desires, and that these people sought to engage with their ‘representatives’, the tribunes of the plebs, to attain a legislative response. My other research interests include Roman Republican history, Roman Imperial history, Classical historiography, Classical Latin, Political Science.

Other activities

Roles

Specialist Editor, Rosetta Journal
Social Media Coordinator, New Classicists
Assistant on the AHRC funded project Crisis of Rhetoric, led by Dr Henriette van der Blom and Prof. Alan Finlayson

Publications

Salisbury, B.G.J. (2020), (ed.)‘Selected Papers from the ‘Popular in Classical Antiquity Conference’, New Classicists, 2
Salisbury, B. (2019), 'The Status of Plebiscita 494-287', New Classicists, 1, pp. 41-58.

Papers:

(Accepted) Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History, University of Exeter, United Kingdom (20th-21st March 2020). Paper title: ‘They Said it Changes When the sun Goes Down: Temporal Limitations on Communication in the Roman Public Sphere’.
(Invited) Departmental Postgraduate work-in-progress series, Rosetta Forum, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom (17th March 2020). Paper title: TBC.
(Invited) Departmental Research Seminar Series, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain (17th February 2020). Paper title: Tribunes of the plebs and public opinion in the Late Roman Republic’.
(2019), Spaces of Roman Constitutionalism, University of Helsinki, (26th-28th September 2019), Part of the ERC funded ‘Law, Governance, and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition’ project – ‘Defining a Public Sphere at Rome in the Late Roman Republic’.
(2019), 'Public Opinion in the Late Roman Republic: Public Spirit, Emotional Appeals, and Collective Decision Making', Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History, Cambridge.
(2019), 'Reconsidering the Language of Popular Public Opinion in the Late Roman Republic', The Popular in Classical Antiquity, University of Pennsylvania.
(2018), 'For the Many (and the Few): The place of the lex Gabinia de bello piratico and the lex Manilia in studying popular sentiment', Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History, Birkbeck University of London.