Shushma Malik

BA(Hons), MA, PhD Bristol

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

I joined the Department of Humanities at Roehampton in December 2017. Prior to this, I lectured in Roman history and Latin at the University of Queensland, Australia (2015-17) and the University of Manchester (2013-15). My research interests include the roles of Roman emperors in post-classical texts, Roman religions, and imperial historiography. In particular, I have worked extensively on the Emperor Nero’s portrayal in Christian history as the Antichrist, and have published on portrayals of Roman emperors in the works and letters of Oscar Wilde. My first monograph The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm was published in spring 2020 with Cambridge University Press.

I am also co-author of a series for the online media outlet The Conversation, entitled ‘Mythbusting Ancient Rome’, and have twice appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s national radio programme Conversations with Richard Fidler. I have twice contributed to BBC Radio programmes on ancient Roman topics: BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature: The Deluxe Edition, and BBC Radio 4's In Our Time: Nero. I have published articles in the BBC History Magazine, the BBC World Histories Magazine, and History Today.

I am currently the Co-I (PIs Dr Marta Garcia-Morcillo [Roehampton] and Prof. Filippo Carla-Uhink [Potsdam]) on the joint AHRC-DFG funded project '“Twisted Transfers”: Discursive Constructions of Corruption in Ancient Greece and Rome' (2020-2023) . The project explores notions of corruption in discourse in Graeco-Roman Antiquity that move beyond the definition of corruption in law in order to investigate their interaction with specific cultural, political and economic contexts. By concentrating on the law courts of classical Athens to the ethics of Byzantine diplomacy, the project will identify the influence on the formation of later discourses in Western societies today. 

2020/21

CAH020C102A - Rome: Epic and Empire

CAH020N201A - Historiography: In the Footsteps of Herodotus

CAH020N305A - Latin: Special Author

CAH020X309A - Nero: The Emperor and his Legacy