Dr. Austen Leigh LaRocca
Austen Leigh LaRocca is a New Jersey native who concentrates on the art of the ancient world and how it is received and interpreted in subsequent contexts. As a scholar in Cultural Heritage Studies, as well as Art History, Dr. LaRocca approaches material culture through an interdisciplinary lens that examines how and why we study objects and their interpretive contexts. Her recent dissertation “Arches & Memory: A Diachronic View of Roman Material Culture” looks at freestanding arch monuments in the ancient city of Rome and explores not only their significance in the ancient world, but their use as political and cultural symbols from Late Antiquity to the present.
