Jessica Romney

Dr. Jessica Romney is an Associate Professor at MacEwan University within the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Science. Her research focuses on ancient identity formation, particularly through archaic Greek lyric poetry, food and drink symbolism, and political discourse analysis.

• PhD in Classics and Ancient History (2015), University of Bristol
• Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015-2017), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
• Teaching experience at University of Victoria, Dickinson College, and University of Calgary

Her work explores how archaic sympotic poetry constructs social identities through allusions to Homeric heroes, food-based spatial metaphors, and rhetorical negotiations of exile. Current projects examine Mediterranean culinary frameworks that define ‘civilized’ vs ‘uncivilized’ spaces, as well as cognitive theory applications to classical texts.

Selected publications include Lyric Poetry and Social Identity in Archaic Greece (2020), and articles in Mnemosyne, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, and the Routledge Handbook of Classics and Cognitive Theory. Recent conference papers analyze gendered grammar in Alcaeus, didactic authority in elegy, and the poetics of boundary transgression in iambos.

Scientific Awards:

• SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015-2017)

She contributes to debates about group membership in Demosthenes’ speeches and contingent academic contracts through her University Affairs article (2020). Her methodological approach combines critical discourse analysis with performance context studies.