Outline

This conference organised within the framework of the Locally Crafted Empires project focusses on the questions: how do local and regional entanglements with, and responses to, different imperial hegemonies express themselves in the several thousand extant portraits of individuals crafted by local communities in Western Asia and Egypt between the late Hellenistic period and Late Antiquity? And what do these portraits tell us about intersecting identities on individual, local and regional levels when studied in a longue durée perspective?

Portraits, defined here as representations of the individual, are a crucial art historical category that expresses the complexity of the individual human being, while at the same time reflecting broader local, regional and even global trends. Therefore, portraits form the ideal group to be studied as responses to changing regimes and as material that ordered knowledge, shaped and expressed identities. Ancient portraits created in what often have been treated in scholarship as “peripheral” areas of ancient empires have usually been studied as direct responses to core-imperial traditions and developments, and they have often been seen as merely passive absorbers of these. But this conference will turn the tables on this traditional approach.

This conference takes its point of departure in the processes that underpinned the creation of these representations of individuals: the techniques, processes, approaches, tools and materials used in the making of these portraits; the training of local craftspeople, their places of work, and their interactions with their customers; the ways in which craftspeople engaged with broader fashions and material supply networks to produce images that functioned primarily in local contexts and responded to local concerns. Another question arises from the fact that in many regions of West Asia and Egypt portraits were rarely, if ever, created. What motivated some communities to develop a portrait habit, and what causes others to refrain from doing so?

We seek to include research presentations covering the wide range of media in which portraits were crafted (mosaics, paintings (on walls, wood and fabric), and sculptures in stone, terracotta and metal) and we ask speakers to engage with case studies that move beyond the narratives of centre versus periphery, and consider the evidence from the region in its proper local and regional context.

Local portrait-images will in this conference be investigated not merely as pale reflections of imperial values generated at the distant centres, but rather analysed as the primary evidential basis through which imperial systems and their societal impacts can be studied – including their oppressive aspects. We include material from a broad time span to take into consideration shifting imperial influences (Greek, Roman, Parthian, Sasanian) and reactions to these in the regions under consideration.

Programme

Book of abstracts

Speakers and discussants

Anna Anguissola (University of Pisa)
Anna-Katharina Rieger (Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)
Ben Russell (University of Edinburgh)
Clarissa Blume-Jung (Ruhr University Bochum)
Giulia Vannucci (Aarhus University)
Giovanni Colzani (Aarhus University)
Julia Lenaghan (University of Verona)
Julia Steding (Aarhus University)
Katharina Meinecke (Saarland University)
Lennart Kruijer (University of Exeter)
Lucy Audley-Miller (King’s College London)
Lucy Wadeson (University of St Andrews)
Michael Blömer (University of Münster)
Olympia Bobou (Aarhus University)
Rubina Raja (Aarhus University)
Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Will Wootton (King’s College London)

Practical information for speakers

Travel

For invited speakers we will cover travel (economy class only) and up to 3 nights of accommodation. Please book your own travel to Copenhagen, and we will reimburse you after your stay (please book your ticket directly through an airline and not via a travel search engine). We would appreciate it, if you could book sooner rather than later in order to get a reasonably priced flight.

You will receive a link to Aarhus University's travel reimbursement form. Please keep your receipts as you will be asked to upload documentation for your expenses.

NOTE: As soon as you have booked your flight, please forward your itinerary to Julia Steding (j.steding@cas.au.dk), so that the hotel booking can be finalised.

Accommodation

Comfort Hotel Vesterbro
Vesterbrogade 23/29
1620 København
Website

Photographs

We will take photographs during the conference, which we store and use for e.g. reporting purposes. If you do not want us to use photos in which you are depicted, please contact Julia Steding (j.steding@cas.au.dk).

Registration

If you wish to participate in the conference, please send an email to Julia Steding (j.steding@cas.au.dk)

Note that lunch is only provided for speakers, but everyone is welcome to participate in the coffee breaks.

Registration deadline: 21 February 2026.