Victoria Leonard
Victoria Leonard is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University. She joined the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, as a Research Associate in 2017, and became a Research Fellow in 2020. She is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London. She has held fellowships at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and Fondation Hardt, Geneva.
Victoria was a Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the European Research Council funded project ‘Connected Clerics. Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West (380-604 CE)’, at Royal Holloway, University London and the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH-ÖAW), Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften). Her role within the project involved compiling data on clerical connections and using adapted digital tools to examine and visualize evolving clerical networks in the late ancient and early medieval western Mediterranean.
Victoria’s research focuses on the late antique and early medieval western Mediterranean, with a special interest in: historiography; ancient religion; receptions of patristic texts in early modern print cultures; and gender, sexuality, violence, and theories of the body in antiquity.
Victoria has published articles in the journals Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vigiliae Christianae, Studies in Late Antiquity, and Gender&History. Her monograph, In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past, was published by Routledge in January 2022. With Laurence Totelin and Mark Bradley, Victoria has edited the volume Bodily Fluids in Antiquity for Routledge (2021). Her second monograph, Gendered Violence in the Roman Mediterranean, is under contract with Cambridge University Press for the Key Themes in Ancient History Series
In 2023, Victoria was a David Walker Memorial Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Her project explored the reception of Paulus Orosius's Historiae in early print cultures in early modern Europe.
Victoria has written for The Guardian, the Church Times, and The Times Higher Education, and she has contributed to BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking. She is a member of the Editorial Board for the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, published by Oxford University Press, for the book series Gendered Violence. A Cultural History of the Gendering of Violence from Late Antiquity through the Late Nineteenth Century, published by Brepols, and for Women in Ancient Cultures, published by Liverpool University Press.
Victoria is currently serving on the Council for the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (2024-27). She has reviewed for Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Bloomsbury, and Liverpool University Press.
From 2020 until 2024, Victoria was co-chair, with Elena Giusti, of the CUCD Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She is a founding member, former co-chair, and former steering committee member of the Women’s Classical Committee (UK). Victoria organises #WCCWiki for the WCC UK which seeks to improve the representation of classicists (broadly conceived) who identify as women or non-binary on Wikipedia. #WCCWiki was awarded Wikimedia UK's Partnership of the Year prize in 2022. Victoria is a founding member of the International Orosian Network.
Victoria is interested in supervising PhD projects in late antiquity, early Christianity, gendered violence in antiquity, late antique historiography, Orosius and the Historiae adversus paganos, and gender, violence, women, and theories of the body in antiquity.
Current doctoral supervision:
Kirsty Harrod, ‘Narratives of Sexual Violence in Greek Tragedy’, passed with minor corrections (Director of Studies)
Helen Lord, ‘Classical Pedagogy as Conceived by Women in the Nineteenth Century’ (Director of Studies)
Christopher Lillington-Martin, 'Historiography and Characterisation in the 'Wars' and 'Secret History' of Procopius the Caesarean (c.500-555)'
Georgina Homer, 'Minor Characters in Classical Tragedy and its Modern Receptions'
Address: Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities
Institute for Creative Cultures
Parkside
Coventry University
Coventry CV1 2NE
Victoria was a Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the European Research Council funded project ‘Connected Clerics. Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West (380-604 CE)’, at Royal Holloway, University London and the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH-ÖAW), Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften). Her role within the project involved compiling data on clerical connections and using adapted digital tools to examine and visualize evolving clerical networks in the late ancient and early medieval western Mediterranean.
Victoria’s research focuses on the late antique and early medieval western Mediterranean, with a special interest in: historiography; ancient religion; receptions of patristic texts in early modern print cultures; and gender, sexuality, violence, and theories of the body in antiquity.
Victoria has published articles in the journals Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vigiliae Christianae, Studies in Late Antiquity, and Gender&History. Her monograph, In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past, was published by Routledge in January 2022. With Laurence Totelin and Mark Bradley, Victoria has edited the volume Bodily Fluids in Antiquity for Routledge (2021). Her second monograph, Gendered Violence in the Roman Mediterranean, is under contract with Cambridge University Press for the Key Themes in Ancient History Series
In 2023, Victoria was a David Walker Memorial Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Her project explored the reception of Paulus Orosius's Historiae in early print cultures in early modern Europe.
Victoria has written for The Guardian, the Church Times, and The Times Higher Education, and she has contributed to BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking. She is a member of the Editorial Board for the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, published by Oxford University Press, for the book series Gendered Violence. A Cultural History of the Gendering of Violence from Late Antiquity through the Late Nineteenth Century, published by Brepols, and for Women in Ancient Cultures, published by Liverpool University Press.
Victoria is currently serving on the Council for the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (2024-27). She has reviewed for Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Bloomsbury, and Liverpool University Press.
From 2020 until 2024, Victoria was co-chair, with Elena Giusti, of the CUCD Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She is a founding member, former co-chair, and former steering committee member of the Women’s Classical Committee (UK). Victoria organises #WCCWiki for the WCC UK which seeks to improve the representation of classicists (broadly conceived) who identify as women or non-binary on Wikipedia. #WCCWiki was awarded Wikimedia UK's Partnership of the Year prize in 2022. Victoria is a founding member of the International Orosian Network.
Victoria is interested in supervising PhD projects in late antiquity, early Christianity, gendered violence in antiquity, late antique historiography, Orosius and the Historiae adversus paganos, and gender, violence, women, and theories of the body in antiquity.
Current doctoral supervision:
Kirsty Harrod, ‘Narratives of Sexual Violence in Greek Tragedy’, passed with minor corrections (Director of Studies)
Helen Lord, ‘Classical Pedagogy as Conceived by Women in the Nineteenth Century’ (Director of Studies)
Christopher Lillington-Martin, 'Historiography and Characterisation in the 'Wars' and 'Secret History' of Procopius the Caesarean (c.500-555)'
Georgina Homer, 'Minor Characters in Classical Tragedy and its Modern Receptions'
Address: Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities
Institute for Creative Cultures
Parkside
Coventry University
Coventry CV1 2NE
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (74)
Uploads
Books by Victoria Leonard
Professor Peter Van Nuffelen, Ghent University:
"Victoria Leonard has written a spirited defense of Orosius’ originality and impact. Deftly combining contemporary theories with close-reading of the Latin text, the book ranges widely, covering topics such as temporality and imperialism. Demonstrating the intellectual efforts needed to come to terms with the disaster of the sack of Rome in 410, it also nicely illustrates the perennial importance of historical narratives to help us make sense of the present."
"Victoria Leonard's volume is a wise and balanced book, filled with intellectual depth and intensive discussion. Every sentence is well-thought out and clearly formulated. Her analysis of Orosius’ ‘proto-postcolonial’ discourse and its subsequent deconstruction is thought-provoking and inspiring.'"
Dr Maijastina Kahlos, University of Helsinki / Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, The Classical Review
"In Defiance of History is a nicely produced, well-written and welcome addition to the scholarship. Leonard fully succeeds in her aim of demonstrating why the Spanish priest should no longer be dismissed as an inferior writer ... With In Defiance of History, Leonard has thrown down the gauntlet for an ambitiously systematic and wide-ranging exploration of the Histories. We must all now wait patiently, and eagerly, for this gauntlet to be picked up."
Dr Michael Wuk, University of Lincoln, Al-Masāq
Databases by Victoria Leonard
Articles by Victoria Leonard
"Ulriika Vihervalli and Victoria Leonard’s “Elite Women and Gender-Based Violence in Late Roman Italy” (pp. 201–222) is very short but genuinely groundbreaking in the wayit focalizes the period’s high politics, in both church and state, through the violence inflicted upon elite women. The article examines various forms of gender-based violence, from the pressures of procreation and marriage accompanied by threat of harm; pregnancy and violence; abduction, captivity and rape; and finally the murder or assassination of women and their relatives. The section on Maria and Thermantia, the daughters of Stilicho and Serena married to Honorius each in their turn, is particularly effective as a window into the article’s main concerns, as too are discussions of Galla Placidia and Eudocia: the authors are quite right that their skill and long, successful engagement in imperial politics are too often used to romanticize, obfuscate, or play down the basic fact that both were abducted and forced into marriages as young women. While the article is perhaps less closely focused on Roman Italy than most others in the book, it should be required reading for anyone writing on the politics of the period."
Michael Kulikowski: Rezension zu: Jeroen W. P. Wijnendaele (ed.): Late Roman Italy.
Imperium to Regnum. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2023. In: Plekos 26, 2024,
S. 619–629 (URL: https://www.plekos.uni-muenchen.de/2024/r-wijnendaele.pdf).
https://cucd.blogs.sas.ac.uk/bulletin/
[Opens PDF] http://cucd.blogs.sas.ac.uk/files/2015/01/WCC-Launch-Event-Report.pdf
Professor Peter Van Nuffelen, Ghent University:
"Victoria Leonard has written a spirited defense of Orosius’ originality and impact. Deftly combining contemporary theories with close-reading of the Latin text, the book ranges widely, covering topics such as temporality and imperialism. Demonstrating the intellectual efforts needed to come to terms with the disaster of the sack of Rome in 410, it also nicely illustrates the perennial importance of historical narratives to help us make sense of the present."
"Victoria Leonard's volume is a wise and balanced book, filled with intellectual depth and intensive discussion. Every sentence is well-thought out and clearly formulated. Her analysis of Orosius’ ‘proto-postcolonial’ discourse and its subsequent deconstruction is thought-provoking and inspiring.'"
Dr Maijastina Kahlos, University of Helsinki / Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, The Classical Review
"In Defiance of History is a nicely produced, well-written and welcome addition to the scholarship. Leonard fully succeeds in her aim of demonstrating why the Spanish priest should no longer be dismissed as an inferior writer ... With In Defiance of History, Leonard has thrown down the gauntlet for an ambitiously systematic and wide-ranging exploration of the Histories. We must all now wait patiently, and eagerly, for this gauntlet to be picked up."
Dr Michael Wuk, University of Lincoln, Al-Masāq
"Ulriika Vihervalli and Victoria Leonard’s “Elite Women and Gender-Based Violence in Late Roman Italy” (pp. 201–222) is very short but genuinely groundbreaking in the wayit focalizes the period’s high politics, in both church and state, through the violence inflicted upon elite women. The article examines various forms of gender-based violence, from the pressures of procreation and marriage accompanied by threat of harm; pregnancy and violence; abduction, captivity and rape; and finally the murder or assassination of women and their relatives. The section on Maria and Thermantia, the daughters of Stilicho and Serena married to Honorius each in their turn, is particularly effective as a window into the article’s main concerns, as too are discussions of Galla Placidia and Eudocia: the authors are quite right that their skill and long, successful engagement in imperial politics are too often used to romanticize, obfuscate, or play down the basic fact that both were abducted and forced into marriages as young women. While the article is perhaps less closely focused on Roman Italy than most others in the book, it should be required reading for anyone writing on the politics of the period."
Michael Kulikowski: Rezension zu: Jeroen W. P. Wijnendaele (ed.): Late Roman Italy.
Imperium to Regnum. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2023. In: Plekos 26, 2024,
S. 619–629 (URL: https://www.plekos.uni-muenchen.de/2024/r-wijnendaele.pdf).
https://cucd.blogs.sas.ac.uk/bulletin/
[Opens PDF] http://cucd.blogs.sas.ac.uk/files/2015/01/WCC-Launch-Event-Report.pdf
Sponsored by the ERC Project CONNEC 'Connected Clerics: Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West' and Royal Holloway, University of London. Organised by Victoria Leonard, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London and David Natal Villazala.
Organisers: Ben Morris, Ciara Butler, Ewan Short (Cardiff), Alice van den Bosch (Exeter) and Becca Grose (Reading)