Overview
This event will feature Dr Owen Rees discussing his latest book, The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past (Bloomsbury 2025). Challenging the familiar, Rome- and Greece-centred view of antiquity, the book explores what life was really like on the fringes of the ancient world.
When the poet Ovid was exiled to the edge of the Roman Empire, he described it as a bleak and barbarous place – but was it really so? Drawing on new archaeological evidence, Dr Rees reveals the borderlands of ancient empires as vibrant and dynamic regions where cultures met, mixed, and thrived. From North Africa to the Black Sea, and from Southeast Asia to Roman Britain, these were not marginal backwaters but crucial sites of exchange and innovation.
The event will take the form of an “in conversation with” discussion between Dr Rees and Dr Cezary Kucewicz, followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience.
Speaker
Dr Owen Rees is an interdisciplinary researcher at Birmingham Newman University with a core specialism in ancient history. He studied at the universities of Reading and Nottingham before completing his PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2018. Previously, Owen held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Medical Humanities at the University of Durham, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Nottingham. Owen is also the founder and lead editor of badancient.com, which brings together a growing network of specialists to fact-check common claims made about the ancient world.
Details
This event is open to all and free to attend with no need to book.
This is a hybrid event, which will take place in-person in the Gatsby Room (Chancellor's Centre) and also on Zoom.
If you would like to attend online, please register for the Zoom link.
Refreshments will be available for the in-person audience.
Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Wolfson Humanities Society
The Humanities Society organises regular talks spanning a wide range of topics which take place every Tuesday during term time - please sign up to their mailing list to keep up to date with their upcoming events.
Image: By Ptolemy - This file has been provided by the British Library from its digital collections.
