Staff profile

Edmund Thomas is Associate Professor in Ancient Visual and Material Culture. His main research interests are Roman architecture and its relation to Roman society and culture and the reception of ancient architectural traditions in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

His book Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age (Oxford University Press) appeared in 2007. He has written articles on the Pantheon and Septizodium in Rome, on Severan architecture and on Roman epigraphy, Roman sarcophagi and architectural aesthetics, and has jointly authored a work on the historical topography of Winchester from the late Iron Age to 1800 for the Historic Towns Atlas series, which was published by OUP in 2017.

He co-edited volumes of papers on the materiality of inscribed texts in Greek and Roman antiquity with Andrej and Ivana Petrovic and on interactions between animals and humans in classical antiquity with Thorsten Foegen. 

He is interested in the intersection between architecture and philosophy and is now co-editing a volume on the legacy of Plato's Timaeus between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance with Jacomien Prins.

Dr Thomas is on research leave for the academic year 2022-23, to complete a monograph on the tectonics of the keystone within the classical tradition, entitled Keystones: dialogues between architecture, philosophy, and politics. 

He is also presently completing a study of the spirally fluted column in antiquity, sponsored by the British Academy and the Council for British Research in the Levant, and is preparing another book, Words on Buildings: relations between architecture and text since antiquity.

Recent published work includes an analysis of movement in Jean de la Roque's description of Baalbek; and a survey of seasonality in imperial Roman architecture. He is also preparing a study of palace descriptions in first- and second-century Latin literature and their relation to "Baroque" architecture, and a consideration of the reception of the Elder Piny's account of Gaius Curio's revolving theatres in the architecture of Bernini. 

He has spent lengthy periods of research in Rome and has been involved in archaeological excavations at Butrint in Albania. He is also a qualified archivist and has a special interest in the description and management of architectural drawings.

• Roman Architecture
• Monumentality
• Roman Epigraphy
• Ancient Aesthetics
• Roman Sarcophagi
• Classicism
• Vitruvius
• Light in Architecture
• Spirally fluted columns

Authored book

• Thomas, Edmund (Forthcoming). Words on Buildings: Relations between Architecture and Text since Antiquity. Oxford University Press.
• Thomas, Edmund (Forthcoming). Keystones: Dialogues between Architecture, Philosophy, and Politics.
• Biddle, Martin, Clayre, Beatrice, Keene, Derek, Morris, Francis & Thomas, Edmund (2017). Historic Towns Atlas: Winchester. The Historic Towns Trust and the Winchester Excavations Committee.
• Thomas, Edmund (2007). Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter in book

• Thomas, Edmund (Accepted). The Theatres of Gaius Curio and the Evolution of the Baroque. In Architecture and Text. Fane-Saunders, Peter Cambridge Universuty Press.
• Thomas, Edmund (2020). Movement through Ruins: Re-experiencing Ancient Baalbek with Jean de la Roque. In Early Modern Spaces in Motion: Design, Experience and Rhetoric. Skelton, Kimberley Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 163-188.
• Thomas, Edmund (2017). Performance Space. In The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic. Johnson, William A. & Richter, Daniel S. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 181-201.
• Thomas, Edmund (2017). Urban Geographies of Human-Animal Relations in Classical Antiquity. In Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Foegen, Thorsten & Thomas, Edmund Berlin: De Gruyter. 339-368.
• Foegen, Thorsten & Thomas, Edmund (2017). Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Introduction. In Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Foegen, Thorsten & Thomas, Edmund Berlin: De Gruyter. 1-18.
• Thomas, Edmund (2015). Roman Architecture as Art? In A Companion to Roman Art. Borg, Barbara Wiley Blackwell. 344-364.
• Thomas, Edmund (2015). The beauties of architecture. In A companion to ancient aesthetics. Destrée, Pierre & Murray, Penelope Wiley Blackwell. 274-290.
• Thomas, Edmund (2014). On the Sublime in architecture. In Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture. Elsner, Jaś & Meyer, Michel Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 37-88.
• Thomas, Edmund (2013). Introduction: Religious Architecture in the Roman Empire, East and West. In Cities and Gods: Religious Space in Transition. Kaizer, Ted, Leone, Anna, Thomas, Edmund & Witcher, Robert Peeters Publishers. 7-8.
• Thomas, Edmund (2013). The Severan Period. In A Companion to Roman Architecture. Ulrich, Roger & Quenemoen, Caroline Wiley-Blackwell. 82-105.
• Thomas, Edmund (2013). Translating Roman architecture into Greek regional identities. In Les Grecs héritiers des Romains – The Greeks Heirs of the Romans 59e Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique de la Fondation Hardt du 27 au 31 août 2012. Schubert, Paul Geneva: Fondation Hardt. 59: 147-202.
• Thomas, Edmund (2011). ‘Houses of the dead’? Columnar sarcophagi as ‘micro-architecture’. In Life, death and representation: some new work on Roman sarcophagi. Elsner, Jas & Huskinson, Janet Berlin: De Gruyter. 387-435.
• Thomas, Edmund (2010). Architecture. In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. Barchiesi, Alessandro & Scheidel, Walter Oxford University Press. 838-858.
• Thomas, Edmund (2007). Metaphor and identity in Severan architecture: the Septizodium between reality and fantasy. In Severan Culture. Swain, Simon, Harrison, Stephen & Elsner, Jas Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 327-367.
• Thomas, Edmund (2006). 'Atrium', 'Palace', 'Portico', 'Forum'. In The Harvard Companion to the Classical Tradition. Grafton, Anthony, Most, Glenn & Settis, Salvatore Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
• Thomas, Edmund (2004). From the Pantheon of the Gods to the Pantheon of Rome. In Pantheons: Transformations of a monumental idea. Wrigley, R. & Craske, M. Aldershot: Ashgate. 11-34.
• Thomas, Edmund (1998). AB URBE CONDITA TRI[.]: A new commemoration of the imperial tribunician powers from the imperial vicus (Castelporziano). In Castelporziano III: Campagne di scavo e restauro 1987-1991. Lauro, Maria Giuseppina Rome: Viella. 137-149.

Conference Paper

• Thomas, Edmund (1994), The monumentality of the basilica stoa at Thera and Antoninus Pius, in Xavier Dupré i Raventó&s eds, International Association of Classical Archaeology La ciutat en el món romà actes XIV Congrés Internacional d'Arqueologia Clàssica = La ciudad en el mundo romano: actas XIV Congreso Internacional de Arqueología Clásica. Tarragona, Spain, Comitè Organitzador del XIV C.I.A.C., Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Tarragona.

Conference Proceeding

• Kaizer, Ted, Leone, Anna, Thomas, Edmund & Witcher, Robert (2013). Cities and Gods: Religious Space in Transition. Cities and Gods: Religious Space in Transition, Durham, England, Peeters Publishers.

Edited book

• Prins, Jacomien & Thomas, Edmund (Accepted). Plato's Timaeus and the Foundations of Medieval and Renaissance Thought: Philosophy, Science and Art. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History. Brill.
• Petrovic, Andrej, Petrovic, Ivana & Thomas, Edmund (2019). The Materiality of Text - Placement, Perception, and Presence of Inscribed Texts in Classical Antiquity. Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy. Brill.
• Foegen, Thorsten & Thomas, Edmund (2017). Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Journal Article

• Thomas, Edmund (Planned). Antioch, not Alexandria: The Tychaion of Antioch between Seleucids and Rome. Syria: Archéologie, Art et Histoire
• Thomas, Edmund (2017). The Cult Statues of the Pantheon. Journal of Roman Studies 107: 146-212.
• Thomas, Edmund (2013). Chiasmus in Art and Text. Greece and Rome 60(01): 50-88.
• Thomas, Edmund (2012). Water and the display of power in Augustan Rome: the so-called 'Villa Claudia' at Anguillara Sabazia. Water History 4(1): 57-78.
• Thomas, Edmund (2012). "Nero's Tomb" and the Crisis of the Third Century: Roman Sarcophagi as Public and Private Monuments. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61/62(Spring/Autumn): 132-151.
• Thomas, Edmund (1997). The architectural history of the Pantheon in Rome from Agrippa to Septimius Severus via Hadrian. Hephaistos 15(1997): 163-186.
• Thomas, Edmund & Witschel, Christian (1992). Constructing reconstruction: claim and reality of Roman rebuilding inscriptions in the Latin West. Papers of the British School at Rome 60(1992): 135-177.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Biddle, Martin, Keene, Derek & Thomas, Edmund (2006). Wall-map of Historic Winchester, around the year 1800.