Catharine Edwards (historian)


Catharine Harmon Edwards is a British ancient historian and academic. She is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a specialist in Roman cultural history and Latin prose literature, particularly Seneca the Younger.

Early life and education

Edwards studied at the University of Cambridge for both her BA and her PhD.

Academic career

Edwards has been Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London, since 2006. Before joining Birkbeck in 2001, she was a reader at the University of Bristol.
Edwards researches Roman cultural history and Latin prose literature, particularly the Younger Seneca. She also researches the reception of Classical antiquity in later periods.
Edwards is the presenter of the three-part BBC series Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome. She has also contributed to BBC Radio 4's In our time series, on Cleopatra, Roman Britain, Virgil's Aeneid, Tacitus and the decadence of Rome, Pliny the Younger, and The Augustan Age.
She has served as president of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies from June 2015 to June 2018.

Selected publications