Rogier van der Heijden
PhD project: “Constructing the past. Imperial temporality and civic identity in Roman Sardis and Gerasa”
The past was an important element in ancient culture, politics and religion. Most often, historical and mythological references took “Greek” topics as subjects, but previous, non-Graeco-Roman cultural and political episodes also played an important role, especially when they were tied to a state that had a powerful history or Nachleben. In this dissertation, I examined the role of pre-Roman imperial histories and their influences on the construction of local and regional identities in the public spaces of cities in the eastern provinces within the Roman Empire, and how local elites used these pasts as a way to negotiate their status within their province and the empire. As case studies, I discussed, first, Lydian Sardis in the province of Asia, and second, Gerasa in the province of Syria/Arabia, which was founded in the Hellenistic period by the Seleucids. To this end, the following questions were addressed: First, I examined the extent to which pre-Roman imperial histories were a meaningful category for the construction of collective urban identities and their relative value compared to myths. Second, I examined how imperial administrative structures and political and cultural networks influenced the construction and representation of urban identities. Finally, I considered the role of the city as a space, and especially the spatiality of inscriptions, as an actor. I showed that pre-Roman imperial histories of cities in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire were important elements for the construction and negotiation of collective memory and urban identities, that they were influenced by (changes in) imperial structures, and that the city as a space—and the public spaces of the city—played a central role in the transmission of these identities.
Current research project
TBA
Publications
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van der Heijden, Rogier (with Sebastian Fahner and Christian Feichtinger) (2025): Politics of Pasts and Futures in (Post-)Imperial Contexts, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg . peer-reviewed.
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van der Heijden, Rogier (2025): “Introduction: Politics of Pasts and Futures”, in: Politics of Pasts and Futures in (Post-)Imperial Contexts, eds. Sebastian Fahner, Christian Feichtinger and Rogier E.M. van der Heijden, 1–10. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (with S. Fahner and C. Feichtinger).
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van der Heijden, Rogier (2025): “Empire and imagination in Roman Sardis. The Wadi B Temple of the Imperial Cult as Mnemonic Cluster”, in: Politics of Pasts and Futures in (Post-)Imperial Contexts, eds. Sebastian Fahner, Christian Feichtinger and Rogier E.M. van der Heijden, 137–63. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
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van der Heijden, Rogier: Empire and Temporal Imagination in the Roman World: Cultural Memory and Civic Identities in the cities of Asia Minor and the Levant. Impact of Empire. Leiden: Brill. under review. (Publication of PhD dissertation).
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van der Heijden, Rogier (2025): “What’s in a name? Verankering van heden en verleden in stedelijke namen in het Romeinse Midden-Oosten”, Leidschrift 40, no. 2: 33–51.
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van der Heijden, Rogier (2024): “Sardis/Rome, 26 CE: An Imperial Cult Temple in the Province of Asia,” in: Imperial Moments. An Anthology, edited by E. Piller et al.
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van der Heijden, Rogier (2022): “Seeing the Colosseum Valley as a Flavian District. Urban Space as a Demonstration of Imperial Ideology in the Flavian Period”. BABESCH 97: 113–32.
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