Bert Lott is a Teaching Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame and Director of Core Curriculum Implementation for the College of Arts and Letters. As a historian of ancient Rome, he specializes in the political, social, and religious transformations of the early Empire, with particular focus on public inscriptions and the “epigraphic habit.”

Bert earned his Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. in History and Classical Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Notre Dame in 2021, he taught at Vassar College for 25 years, where he was the Matthew Vassar, Jr. Professor of Greek and Roman Studies and Associate Dean of the Faculty.

His scholarship includes two books published by Cambridge University Press: The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome(2004) and Death and Dynasty in Early Imperial Rome (2012), along with numerous articles focusing on Roman calendars and imperial religious practices. Recent publications appear in journals such as Classical Philology, Historia, Classical Journal, and Classical Quarterly. He has also curated museum exhibitions on Roman inscriptions and coinage. His administrative leadership includes chairing Vassar’s Rebalancing the Curriculum Committee (2014-2017), where he led a successful initiative to restructure the college’s curriculum to enhance faculty-student research collaboration. Bert regularly teaches courses ranging from Latin and Greek language to specialized topics in Roman history, epigraphy, and numismatics.

Bert is an avid hiker. He also enjoys playing Mahjong. He admits to having a penchant for sarcasm.

Marilyn Evans is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at Kalamazoo College. She regularly teaches courses in Latin and Greek, Greek and Roman archaeology, and more specialized topics on slavery, race and ethnicity, and the archaeology of settlements and cemeteries in Greek and Roman antiquity. 

Her research focuses on the archaeology of central Italy from the 8th–5th centuries BCE. This is a time when cities were first emerging across the region, and much of her work is directed towards understanding the “how”, the “why”, and the “who” of this process. She has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in Italy since 2009, mainly with the Gabii Project in the ancient city of Gabii, near Rome. 

She earned her PhD in Classical Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, her MA in Classical Languages at the University of Georgia, and BA in Anthropology and Classics at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Before joining Kalamazoo College, she has held positions at Swarthmore College and Haverford College. This is her second time teaching at the Centro, and she couldn’t be more delighted to have Rome as her classroom.

Marilyn is an avid (video) gamer, book reader, pop-culture enthusiast and intermediate drummer—she welcomes any and all invitations to talk about these things.

Aidan Mahoney recently defended his dissertation on space and power in Plautus and Terence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after stops at UC Davis (go Ags) and the University of Kansas. At UNC, he’s taught courses on mythology, Plautus’ Amphitruo, Terence’s Phormio, and Cornelius Nepos’ biography of Hannibal. His primary research focuses on Roman comedy, gender, and space, though he maintains an interest in Ovid, Catullus, Old Comedy, and Athenian tragedy and has presented papers on Propertius, Vergil, Catullus, and Theocritus. As a former Centristo (Fall 2016) he looks forward to exploring Rome and Italy again (and especially seeing any and all Gorgons), as well as gaining a few pounds in the Centro dining rooms. Outside the classroom, he enjoys reading (particularly fantasy), watching horror movies (the original Suspiria is a good old Italian giallo), and suffering the eternal turmoil of a Philadelphia sports fan.

Joe Droegemueller is a PhD candidate in Classical Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. He was at the Centro in Fall 2019 as an undergraduate at Boston University. His main research interests lie in Roman comedic theater, its performance and reception, but he also researches topics ranging from smell to the sea/marine life. Joe’s dissertation project takes a multifaceted approach to the physical communication between actors and spectators in the plays of Plautus and Terence, exploring how this element of the plays reveals much about the theatrical experience itself, contemporary social hierarchies, and theatricality beyond the walls of the theater. He is excited to visit the many ancient theaters scattered throughout Italy with this year’s centristi, and hopes that they gain an appreciation for the performative aspects in ancient life, whether onstage or elsewhere. Outside of the classroom, you can find Joe at pub trivia, or playing mandolin in the Centro courtyard or at a local Irish music session.

Barbara Castaldo (Laurea, Università La Sapienza di Roma; M.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., New York University) is specialized in contemporary Italian literature with a doctoral thesis on Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini (awarded Premio Pasolini in 2009). Her research interests include law and literature scholarship and comparative literature. She has published articles on contemporary Italian authors (Sandro Veronesi, Marco Lodoli, Ennio Flaiano, Pier Paolo Pasolini), and has appeared in a number of TV documentaries and radio interviews for Rai Storia (Italy), Arte TV (France-Germany), Österreich 1 (Austria). She is currently working on a book on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s legal trials. She has taught courses of Italian language at all levels and has been teaching Italian at ICCS since 2005.

Paul Tegmeyer began studying art history as an undergraduate at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he was raised. After moving to Italy, actually l’Aquila, outside Rome, in 1983, he began graduate school at Temple University in Rome, and then Philadelphia. He later entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Pennsylvania. His area of specialization is the Italian Renaissance.

He began teaching the Renaissance. to Baroque Rome course at ICCS from 1990-92 and again from 1997 on. He also been teaching at John Cabot University in Rome since 1991. Here he has had the opportunity to expand his repertoire beyond the Italian Renaissance, teaching courses on Ancient and Medieval Rome, Baroque art, as well as monographic courses on Renaissance Rome; Raphael; Michelangelo; Bernini; et al. Since 1997 he has also conducted the Rome Seminar for the Smithsonian Institute.

His research focuses primarily on various aspects of Roman Renaissance art (Raphael, Pollaiuolo, Michelangelo, et al.). He is also now in the early stages of preparing with other colleagues, a “Guide to Renaissance Rome”.

Francesca Guiducci is a mosaic conservator at the Vatican Museums and a Lecturer at the Centro. Trained in conservation at University College London, where she earned both an M.A. in Principles of Conservation and an M.Sc. in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums, she brings a deep commitment to the preservation and interpretation of material heritage.

Francesca’s work spans both fieldwork and laboratory-based conservation. She has served as a lead site conservator on major international archaeological projects, including at Dangeil in Sudan in collaboration with the British Museum, where she was responsible for the conservation of wall paintings, architectural structures, and small finds. She has also contributed to conservation efforts at sites such as Aphrodisias in Turkey and Ostia Antica in Rome.

In addition to her conservation practice, Francesca is an experienced educator, having taught conservation history, theory, and management at institutions including The American University of Rome. At the Centro, she teaches on the conservation and management of the material heritage of ancient Rome, helping students engage directly with the challenges and ethics of preserving the past.

Her work reflects a strong interest in public engagement, training, and capacity building in conservation, as well as a commitment to collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to cultural heritage.