Austin Lecture 2026

Event details

Location

Date and time

  • Thursday, 6 August 2026, 6pm

Event type

  • In-person

Event Fee

  • Free

Registration

  • Register via the link below
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The Austin Lecture was established in honour of Professor Mervyn Austin, a long-term Chair of Classics and Ancient History, who served UWA from the 1950s to the late 1970s.

 

This year's lecture: Did Archaic Rome Have Queens?

We are all familiar with the idea that Rome was ruled by kings — seven of them, to be precise, from the founder Romulus (753 BCE) to the arrogant Tarquinius Superbus, whose expulsion resulted in the foundation of the Roman Republic in 509 BCE. There is much about this traditional narrative that is inaccurate and misleading, but it is generally accepted by historians that archaic Rome was a monarchy (although what sort of monarchy is much less clear). Among the many scholarly debates, the question of female authority or influence, and the roles that female relatives of the kings might have played, has been largely neglected. This is the challenge which this lecture takes up, excavating both the archaeological and literary sources for early Rome to uncover evidence of these forgotten women.

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Keynote speaker

Professor Caillan Davenport

Professor Caillan Davenport is Professor of Classics and Head of the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University. Professor Davenport is an expert in Roman History and in Ancient Monarchies. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Behind Caesar's Back, published by Yale University Press. In the course of his career, Professor Davenport has received the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Prize, a Rome Award from the British School at Rome, an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, an ARC Future Fellow and an Experienced Researcher Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which he held at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. Professor Davenport has been elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Professor Davenport is committed to public outreach and engagement. He is a regular contributor to the Emperors of Rome Podcast, which was named Best Australian History Podcast in 2019 by Apple.