The Classics Department welcomes the arrival to its staff of Dr. Sam Agbamu.

Sam is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Classics. He returned to Royal Holloway in January 2022, after working here as a visiting lecturer in 2019-2020. Sam’s teaching and research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to Latin literature, Roman history, and what these have to say in the modern era. He is especially interested in how the literature of the Roman Empire has been used by modern empires, with a particular focus on European imperialism in Africa. 

Sam gained a PhD in Classics from King’s College London in 2019, with a thesis looking at how modern Italian imperialism in North and East Africa, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, used the history of Roman imperialism in Africa to promote itself. Before his PhD, Sam studied for his BA and MPhil in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 

His Leverhulme project homes in on a neglected Latin epic poem from the fourteenth century, written by the important early humanist, Petrarch. This epic, the Africa, tells the story of the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE), in which the Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated his fearsome Carthaginian nemesis, Hannibal. Sam is thinking about how Petrarch’s poem takes ancient Roman ideas about imperialism in Africa, and how Petrarch constructs his own idea of empire around these Roman ones. Linked to this, Sam examines how Petrarch’s poem contributes to later ideas about ‘race’ and nationhood. 

Sam’s additional interests include anti-racist and anti-colonial perspectives on the ancient world – most recently, he has written about the South African artist William Kentridge. 

Prior to his return to Royal Holloway, Sam worked as a Latin and Classics teacher at a sixth form college in Cambridge. He holds a PGCE in Latin and Classics from Kings College London.