The Roman Society offers a prize for a dissertation written for a one-year full-time or two-year part-time Taught Master’s degree (MA, MSt, MPhil, MRes or equivalent). 

The successful applicant will receive £100 and a year’s free membership of the Society. The name of the winner and title of the dissertation will be published in the Journals (in the Proceedings) and posted on the Society’s website.

Entries are invited from students at British universities, and should be submitted through and with the support of the relevant university department. Only one entry per department can be considered, but more than one department in the same University may submit an entry. The award will be judged by the Society’s Roman Studies Committee.

All topics included in the Society’s remit will be eligible: Roman history, literature, archaeology and art down to about A.D. 700. We will also consider dissertations on reception. 

Dissertations and a letter of recommendation from the nominating department must reach the Roman Society’s Secretary by 15 November 2024. Only dissertations submitted for degrees awarded in the academic year 2023-24 may be submitted.  The successful applicant will be notified in January 2025.

Dissertations should be sent by email: Fiona Haarer (office@romansociety.org).

Previous Winners

2024

Farrell Monaco (Leicester) - 'Panem Bonum Fert - Of Baths, Bread, and Bread-Stamps in 1st Century Herculaneum'

2023

Caitlin Spencer (Birkbeck) – ‘Creating the tyrant Domitian: literary construction and commemoration in Pliny’s Panegyricus and Suetonius’ Lives’

Sólveig Hilmarsdóttir (Cambridge) – ‘Ovid and Language Contact in Exile: a Sociolinguistic Analysis of Greek Vocabulary in the Exile Poetry’.

2022

Siobhan McShane (King's College London): 'Some myths need to be ripped apart' (lizuka): The violence of reception and reception of violence in Naomi lizuka's Polaroid Stories: An adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses