Iain Ferris

I am a writer and archaeologist based in Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, Wales, specialising in Roman art and archaeology. I have worked at Birmingham University and Manchester University and directed major excavations in northern England and the midlands. I gained my PhD in 2001 and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2012. I have published widely in academic journals and specialist archaeological monographs and now have written twelve books on different aspects of Roman life, art, and material culture, as featured on this page. My eighth book, 'Cave Canem. Animals and Roman Society', examined Roman attitudes to the natural world and was published in February 2018. My ninth book-'The Dignity of Labour'-about images of artisans and workers in the Roman world and the construction of identity was published in January 2021, having been delayed by the pandemic. My tenth book-'Visions of the Roman North: Art and Identity in Northern Roman Britain' was published by Archaeopress in April 2021 and has been well received. My eleventh book-'A Map of the Body, a Map of the Mind. Visualising Geographical Information in the Roman World'-was published in 2024. In it I examine the use of visual imagery in the Roman world to convey geographical information and how that information might have been received and perceived. I have now just finished a twelfth book 'The Domesticity of Their Darkness. Snapshots of the Enslaved in Roman Art', and have submitted it to Archaeopress of Oxford hopefully for publication in summer 2025. My thoughts are already turning to Book Thirteen, provisionally titled 'This Is A Man's World. Masculinity and Hypermasculinity in Roman Art.' In addition, I have worked up a proposal for a personal memoir about working in British archaeology for the past forty years-'Archaeological Confidential' and have almost finished writing a literary thriller-'The Observation Platform'-which hopefully I can interest an agent in promoting.