My research explores how communities in southern Italy used objects, rituals, and spaces to negotiate identity, memory, status, and social change, particularly during the transformative “long fourth century BCE”. A second strand of my research focuses on the history of archaeology, archaeological collections, and provenance research, as well as digital-humanities approaches to collections.

Currently, I am examining “fake food” items – lead feasting implements and food-shaped terracotta objects – in burial assemblages, particularly in Lucania and Bruttium. Related projects include analysing an unpublished Lucanian elite burial cluster in the Vallo di Diano; investigating the strategies through which the elites of Canosa maintained authority under Roman hegemony; and examining how burial grounds and settlements co-evolved during urbanisation processes in Apulia. In Campania, at Velia, I am studying terracotta figurines from the Acropolis excavations, while developing new fieldwork in the city’s peri-urban landscape together with Professor Alexander Sokolicek. My passion for southern Italy started with my doctoral research on tomb reuse in Apulia and has since grown to encompass many other areas and subjects.