Dr Joe Grimwade

• Education, modern and ancient.
• Roman Republic.
• Memory in the ancient world.
• Oratory and rhetoric.
• Ancient slavery.

Joe is currently working on several projects examining the ongoing influence of ancient pedagogic and philosophical theory on modern education policy and practice, including the OECD's 'Education for human flourishing' framework. He has recently completed a quantitative study on the effects of seminar attendance on student outcomes, encompassing impacts on marks and wellbeing. He is now running a longitudinal study to evaluate the implementation of a novel format of oral assessment in history modules.

Joe has also produced research on the theory and practice of memory in ancient rhetorical education, which demonstrates that instead of treating ostensibly esoteric mnemonic techniques as clever tricks confined to the declamatory schoolroom, we should understand the art of memory as inherently performative: mnemonic techniques allowed speakers (orators, rhetoricians, even certain philosophers) to free themselves from a script and to improvise. He is now considering the nature and importance of mnemonic ability for non-elite specialists, such as the Roman nomenclator, a role typically performed by enslaved individuals, who were nonetheless skilled in memory, social diplomacy, and information management.

Joe has conducted collaborative research in a number of fields. He surveyed a large corpus of thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Latin legal texts from Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, working alongside local landscape historians to investigate the disputes and tensions that arose among riverside communities following the introduction of watermills to the region. He is currently collaborating with scholars from across the humanities and medical sciences as a member of SIAH's project, 'Voicing the Void', led by Prof. Darlington.