Dr Hannah Cornwell

• BA in Literae Humaniores, University of Oxford.
• MPhil in Ancient Greek and/or Roman History, University of Oxford.
• DPhil in Ancient History, University of Oxford.

I completed my undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate at Oxford, where I also spent five years as a College Lecturer (Keble, Trinity and Worcester Colleges).

In 2014 I held the Mougins Museums Rome Award at the British School at Rome and served as a research fellow at the University of Warwick, as part of the ARHC-funded Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project. In 2016 I began a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, which I then transferred to the University of Birmingham in 2017. Since completing the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, I have been a Lecturer and then Associate Professor in Ancient History at Birmingham.

In 2025-2026 I held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for my project 'Performing Diplomacy in the Roman World: Space, Culture, and Identity'.

I teach several aspects Roman history to both undergraduates and graduates as well as supervising undergraduates and graduates research dissertations.

First year undergraduate modules

• Augustus: The Man, the Myth and the Making of History
• The Roman World

Second and third year undergraduate modules

• Roman Society and Internal Conflict
• War, Peace and Diplomacy in the Roman World
• The Age of Cicero
• Republican and Imperial Rome
• Crisis and Empire
• Research Methods

Postgraduate

• Research and Scholarship
• Ideas, Ideals and Ideologies

I welcome proposals for supervision in any aspect of Roman History, especially political aspects of the Roman Republic and Early Principate, Imperial ideology, International Relations and diplomacy, and interdisciplinary approaches to history and material culture. Postgraduate research projects I have supervised or am currently supervising include:

Elizabeth Astbury, 'Social mobility within slave society during the early Principate: a study of columbaria evidence.' (supervising with Dr Gareth Sears).

Ciaran Bartlett, 'Mass Communication in the Roman Empire: A Study of Flavian Imperial Methodology' (supervising with Dr Gareth Sears).

Ben Salisbury, ‘Before Public Opinion: The Role of Tribunes of the Plebs in Creating, Manipulating, and Responding to Popular Sentiment in the Late Roman Republic (c. 70 – 49 BC)’ (supervised with Dr Henriette van der Blom)

Hayley Merchant, ‘A Comparative Study of the Purpose of Military Iconography during Times of Stability and Instability in the Roman Empire from the First to the Fourth Centuries AD’ (supervised with Dr Gareth Sears).

Richard Kendall, ‘Civic Identity in Transtiberim: The Development of an Urban Community’ (supervised with Dr Gareth Sears).

Joshua Larosa, ‘Augustus and the use of Roman ideals to legitimise his rule’ (supervised with Dr Henriette van der Blom)

Find out more - our PhD Classics and Ancient History  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My research interests focus on socio-political history of the Roman Republic and Empire, with a particular interest in the nature of Roman imperialism, and Roman attitudes towards their position as a political power in the Mediterranean. 

My first book, Pax and the Politics of Peace (OUP, 2017), examines the two generations that spanned the collapse of the Republic and the Augustan period in order to understand how the concept of pax Romana, as a central ideology of Roman imperialism, evolved. I argue for the integral nature of pax in understanding the changing dynamics of the Roman state through civil war to the creation of a new political system and world-rule. Roman discourses on peace were part of the wider discussion on the way in which Rome conceptualized her Empire and ideas of imperialism.  I am currently a member of Ancient Peace Studies Network.

I have several publications of the role of peace in civil war,  negotiation and diplomacy during civil conflict, and the development of imperial values and iconography. As part of this research I was a member of DFG - GEPRIS - 393553516 - Interner Krieg. Gesellschaft, soziale Ordnung und politischer Konflikt im Altertum (2018-2022), funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I have also co-edited a volume on ‘Rediscovering the Roman Civil Wars of 49-30 BCE: New Approaches, New Evidence’.

I also research the spaces and culture of diplomacy in the ancient world and am currently part of a Spanish funded research network focused on the spaces of diplomacy in the Roman Republic: Proyecto Ianua.  In 2016-2018 I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to examine the production of space as a means of understanding diplomacy as a social practice, particularly in relation to the urban spaces of the city of Rome. I received a British Academy Small Grant (2022-2024) for 'The shape(s) of diplomacy: a dialogue between ancient and contemporary spaces of negotiation', and in 2025-2026 I held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to work on my second monograph on the Performance and Theatre of Diplomacy in the Roman World.

I have been invited to present on my research a number of International conferences and research seminars, as well as public lectures and events, including numerous Classical Association branches, and the Being Human Festival (2016 and 2026). I have contributed to a number of podcasts for History Hits' 'The Ancients', as well as BBC Radio 4's When Greek Flew Kites.

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Recorded events

• ‘The fight for the Republic: Rome’s violent words and deeds in civil war’,  New Year Lecture for the Birmingham and Midlands Branch of the Classical Association, University of Birmingham, 7 February 2019.
• ‘The Deal’, episode for BBC Radio 4 series When Greeks Flew Kites, 25 February 2018.
• ‘Take it to the Brink’, episode for BBC Radio 4 series When Greeks Flew Kites, 27 August 2017.