Debbie is a Ph.D. candidate whose research and teaching interests lie primarily in Roman social and cultural history, with a specific focus on rural studies and Greek epigraphy in Asia Minor.
She is currently writing her dissertation, entitled "Inventing Roman Bithynia: Rural Cultures and Identities in the 1st-3rd Centuries CE," which explores identity and cultural change in the rural communities of Bithynia, a province of the empire located in northwestern Turkey. Using epigraphic and archaeological evidence for religious and funerary practices, her research shows how villagers, farmers, and even slaves adopted and adapted Roman cultural trends in some instances, while preserving some indigenous traditions in others. This brings to light a class of non-elite, yet moderately wealthy farmers for the first time in Bithynian historiography. Through digital mapping, the project also considers distribution patterns in the evidence in order to study the relationship between ecology, economy, and culture in the region. Debbie has been supported in this work by research fellowships from the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), the DAI Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy in Munich, and the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia.
Debbie's second main research interest concerns the reception of classical antiquity. She has presented on the role of ancient Rome in Italian Fascist ideology, and reviewed a recent book on the topic. She is currently working on the Margarete Bieber Project at Columbia, for which she is conducting archival research both at Columbia and Barnard. The project studies Dr. Bieber's life and contributions to Greek and Roman art, especially her innovative work on ancient dress.
While at Columbia, Debbie has enjoyed teaching her own Latin courses, as well as an interdisciplinary seminar on the Roman Countryside which she designed independently as part of a Teaching Scholars Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has also served as a TA for courses on Roman, Greek, and Egyptian History, as well as Roman Art and Architecture. Moreover, she is a team member of Columbia's archaeological excavation project at Hadrian's Villa in Italy, where she works as Trench Supervisor.
Debbie graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2014, where she received a B.A. in Classics and wrote an honors thesis on the role of Augustan art and archaeology in Italy under Mussolini's Fascist regime. As an undergraduate, she excavated at Ostia Antica as well as Bir Madhkur, in southern Jordan.
Prior to entering Columbia, Debbie worked as a high school Latin teacher in Philadelphia. Email Deborah Sokolowski.