Dr Jessica Hughes

Professional biography

I have been working at The Open University since October 2008. Between 2005 and 2008 I held a post-doctoral fellowship at Cambridge University in the Department of Archaeology, where I worked on a Leverhulme project called Changing Beliefs of the Human Body. I did my PhD and MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (2001-2005), and studied for my BA in Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge (1998-2001).

Research interests

My research combines material and approaches from Classical Studies, Religious Studies and Art History. My publications include Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion (CUP 2017), Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses (co-edited with Professor Graham Harvey, Equinox 2018), and a themed issue of the Open Arts Journal on Material Religion in Pompeii (2021).

Most of my recent research has focused on the changing religious landscape of the southern Italian region of Campania, and especially the area around Vesuvius. You can read more about this on my personal website Campania Sacra.

I am editor of our Open Access e-journal Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies, and Director of The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion: visit our website at www.openmaterialreligion.org.

I run The Votives Project website with Dr Emma-Jayne Graham, and I work with Crispin Paine on the Gods' Collections project.

Teaching interests

I am currently Deputy Chair of our new Level 1 interdisciplinary module Discovering the Arts and Humanities (A111), and Chair of Part 1 of the MA in Classical Studies (A863).

Research groups

Name	Type	Parent Unit
Material Cultures Research Group	Group	Faculty of Arts

Externally funded projects

Our Lady of the Ruins: Religion and Memory in the Valley of Pompeii

Role	Start date	End date	Funding source
Lead	01 Oct 2023	30 Sep 2024	BRITAC British Academy
This fellowship will enable me to complete a book about religion and memory in the Valley of Pompeii, Campania. Based on several years of research - including much on-site archival research in Pompeii - the book will tell the story of the large Catholic shrine of the Madonna of the Blessed Rosary of Pompeii, and its evolving relationship with the nearby archaeological excavations. Using theoretical concepts of 'layering', 'anchoring' and 'legendary topography', the book will explore how the 19th and 20th century builders of the ‘New Pompeii’ (the shrine and surrounding city) responded to the 'Old Pompeii' (the ancient ruins and excavations), and to the Valley's other historical monuments, geological landmarks, and mythical stories. It will show how these ancient things became part of the shrine’s identity, as devotion to Our Lady of Pompeii grew and became ever more international. Spanning the fields of classical reception and material religion, the book will use the exceptionally rich case-study of the Valley of Pompeii to explore the broad issue of how new religious sites are shaped by the older landscapes in which they are situated.

Publications

Journal articles

Review of Salvatore Sorrentino, Nel silenzio il sussurro di una voce: L’itinerario spirituale di Bartolo Longo (2023-05)
Hughes, Jessica
Maria : A Journal of Marian Studies, 3(1) (pp. 1-3)

Material religion and Pompeii: introduction (2021-09-15)
Hughes, Jessica
Open Arts Journal, Article 1(10) (pp. 3-12)

A Sense of Disruption (2020)
Hughes, Jessica
Material Religion, 16(3) (pp. 371-373)

The five senses in Hell (2020)
Lymberopoulou, Angeliki
Material religion, 16(3) (pp. 364-367)

The texture of the gift: religious touching in the Greco-Roman world (2018-08)
Hughes, Jessica
Body and Religion, 2(1) (pp. 88-112)

'Souvenirs of the Self': Personal Belongings as Votive Offerings in Ancient Religion (2017-06-01)
Hughes, Jessica
Religion in the Roman Empire, 3(2) (pp. 181-201)

Studying Votives Across Cultures (2017)
Hughes, Jessica
Material Religion, 13(1) (pp. 104-106)

The votives project (2015-03)
Hughes, Jessica and Graham, Emma-Jayne
Material Religion, 11(1) (pp. 129-131)

The myth of return: restoration as reception in eighteenth-century Rome (2011)
Hughes, Jessica
Classical Receptions Journal, 3(1) (pp. 1-28)

Personifications and the Ancient Viewer: The Case of the Hadrianeum 'Nations' (2009)
Hughes, Jessica
Art History, 32(1) (pp. 1-20)

Fragmentation as metaphor in the Classical healing sanctuary (2008)
Hughes, Jessica
Social History of Medicine, 21(2) (pp. 217-236)

Authored books

Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion (2017-03-29)
Hughes, Jessica
Cambridge Classical Studies
ISBN : 9781107157835 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Book chapters

Tiny and Fragmented Votive Offerings from Classical Antiquity (2019-01-03)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Martin, S. Rebecca and Langin-Hooper, Stephanie M. eds. The Tiny and the Fragmented : Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World (pp. 48-71)
ISBN : 9780190614812 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Phallic Fertility in Pompeii (2018)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Hopwood, Nick; Flemming, Rebecca and Kassell, Lauren eds. Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day
Publisher : CUP | Published : Cambridge

Exhibit 40 - The Room of the Ribbons (2018)
Hughes, Jessica and Flemming, Rebecca
In: Hopwood, Nick; Flemming, Rebecca and Kassell, Lauren eds. Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day (pp. 672-672)
ISBN : 9781107705647 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Fractured Narratives: Writing the Biography of a Votive Offering (2016-01-01)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Weinryb, Ittai ed. Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures. Bard Graduate Center - Cultural Histories of the Material World (pp. 23-48)
ISBN : 9781941792056 | Publisher : University of Chicago Press | Published : Chicago

'No retreat, even when broken': classical architecture in the Presepe Napoletano (2015-03-12)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Hughes, Jessica and Buongiovanni, Claudio eds. Remembering Parthenope: Receptions of Classical Naples from Antiquity to the Present. Classical Presences (pp. 284-309)
ISBN : 978-0-19-967393-3 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Introduction: Entering the siren's city (2015-03-12)
Buongiovanni, Claudio and Hughes, Jessica
In: Hughes, Jessica and Buongiovanni, Claudio eds. Remembering Parthenope: The Reception of Classical Naples from Antiquity to the Present. Classical Presences (pp. 1-18)
ISBN : 978-0-19-967393-3 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Memory and the Roman viewer: looking at the Arch of Constantine (2014-04-30)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Galinsky, Karl ed. Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory. Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (10) (pp. 103-116)
ISBN : 978-0-472-11943-1 | Publisher : University of Michigan Press | Published : Ann Arbor, MI

Dissecting the classical hybrid (2010)
Hughes, Jessica
In: Rebay-Salisbury, K.; Sorensen, M. L. S. and Hughes, J. eds. Body Parts and Bodies Whole. Changing Relations and Meanings (pp. 101-110)
ISBN : 9781842174029 | Publisher : Oxbow | Published : Oxford, UK

Edited books

Material Religion in Pompeii (2021-09-15)
Hughes, Jessica ed.
Publisher : Open Arts Journal | Published : Open University

Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses (2018-09-04)
Harvey, Graham and Hughes, Jessica eds.
Religion and the Senses
ISBN : 9781781794142 | Publisher : Equinox | Published : Sheffield

Remembering Parthenope: The Reception of Classical Naples from Antiquity to the Present (2015-03-12)
Hughes, Jessica and Buongiovanni, Claudio eds.
Classical Presences
ISBN : 978-0-19-967393-3 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Body Parts and Bodies Whole. Changing Relations and Meanings (2010)
Rebay-Salisbury, Katharina; Sorensen, Marie Louise Stig and Hughes, Jessica eds.
ISBN : 978-1-84217-402-9 | Publisher : Oxbow | Published : Oxford

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