Dr Jessica Venner
My research focuses on urban agriculture and horticultural labour in the early imperial Roman world, with particular emphasis on non-elite community resilience and identity within cities. To investigate the socio-economic role of urban agriculture, I combine archaeobotanical, spatial, and epigraphic approaches. A central strand of my work has examined productive green space in Pompeii, with particular interest in post-disaster rebuilding and adaptive reuse prior to the AD 79 eruption, and I am now extending this research to a broader comparative study across Tyrrhenian Italy. I am especially interested in how memory, embedded in cultivation and shared urban space, facilitated belonging, identity, and resilience within non-elite communities and community groups.
Research activities
Cultivating Cohesion: Urban Agriculture in the Towns of Roman Tyrrhenian Italy (Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, University of Oxford)
Gardens of the Roman Empire Project. Project website available here.
Research awards
Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2025-28)
Rome Award, British School at Rome (2025-26)
Early Career Research Award, Royal Historical Society (2025)
Associate Fellowship (elected 2024)
Early Career Research Associateship, Institute of Classical Studies, SAS, University of London (2023-26)
Open Doctoral Award, AHRC-M3C Doctoral Training Programme (2018-22)
Classical Associations Award (2020)