Rebecca Benefiel

Rebecca Benefiel is the Abigail Grigsby Urquhart Professor of Classics at Washington and Lee University, where she has been a faculty member since 2005. She serves as Director of the Ancient Graffiti Project and is a core faculty member for the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, as well as an affiliated faculty member for the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

Education:

• B.A. in Classics with double major in Greek and Latin from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Ph.D. in Classics from Harvard University (2005)

Professor Benefiel specializes in ancient graffiti, particularly from Pompeii, with expertise in Latin epigraphy and Roman social history. Her research reveals the social and economic fabric of Pompeian society through analysis of wall inscriptions, providing insights into daily life, economic mobility, and community dynamics in the early Roman Empire. She utilizes both traditional epigraphic methods and modern technology to uncover and interpret ancient written communications that have been lost to the naked eye.

Scientific Awards:

• Outstanding Faculty Award from State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (2011)
• Rome Prize recipient
• National Geographic podcast on Pompeii graffiti named one of top five travel podcasts

Professor Benefiel has led over 60 students and faculty in fieldwork at Pompeii and Herculaneum. She has held prestigious fellowships at the Library of Congress and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and has been an invited professor at Sapienza University in Rome. She was featured in the PBS NOVA documentary 'Pompeii's Secret Underworld' which aired in February 2025.

She directs the Ancient Graffiti Project, a digital resource that brings ancient graffiti to the public, and has co-edited significant scholarly works including 'Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World' and 'The Epigraphic Cultures of Greece, Rome and Beyond,' with 'The Oxford Handbook to Pompeii' currently in progress.