- UCL History Department
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
Jen Hicks
University College London, Ancient History, Graduate Student
- Ancient Near East, Hellenistic Babylonia, Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egyptian History, Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Ancient History, and 18 moreHellenistic History, Achaemenid History, Hellenistic Monarchy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Greek Epigraphy, Ancient Seals and Sealings, Alexander the Great, Asia Minor, Iraqi History, Hellenistic Bactria, History of Ancient Macedonia, Achaemenid Persia, Hellenistic Literature, Mesopotamian Archaeology, Palmyra, Syria, Dura Europos, Seleucia on the Tigris, and Archaeology of the Hellenistic Eastedit
- I completed my PhD at UCL (funded by the Wolfson Foundation) researching Seleukid administration. I am also the Outreach and Social Media Assistant for the British Institute of Iraq (www.bisi.ac.uk) and serve as a co-opted member of BISI’s Outreach Committee. My primary research interests lie in the social, economic and political histories of the Helleni... moreI completed my PhD at UCL (funded by the Wolfson Foundation) researching Seleukid administration. I am also the Outreach and Social Media Assistant for the British Institute of Iraq (www.bisi.ac.uk) and serve as a co-opted member of BISI’s Outreach Committee.
My primary research interests lie in the social, economic and political histories of the Hellenistic kingdoms. I am particularly interested in the mechanisms through which control was enforced and articulated at both imperial and local levels, and by the experiences of individuals and communities. My doctoral thesis focuses on Seleukid clay bullae (used to seal leather documents) and their impressed seals, which have previously been exploited primarily for their iconography. Through the creation of digital databases, I use statistical methods to analyse the use of seals and the connections between them, in order to explore the daily archival, administrative and fiscal realities in Seleukid Mesopotamia and the Levant, and the relation between the lost documents of the bullae and the more widely studied epigraphic and cuneiform records. Thus this work is about the structures of empire; it enables a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic between core and periphery in the Seleukid kingdom, and between local administration and the upper echelons of power. As such, it allows for Seleukid practices to be placed within the broader geographical and historical context, and suggests possible cross-fertilisation between Seleukid and Ptolemaic systems. My work is also concerned with understanding the experience of empire for the men on the ground, through examination of the interactions of individuals with, and within, the imperial administration and exploration of the articulation of power and privilege, for example in the use of imperial seals.edit
Volume II, PhD thesis, UCL