PROGRAMME:

H17:00 Welcome and introduction
Ilyas Azouzi, Istituto Svizzero
Cinzia Tuena, Istituto Svizzero, University of Basel

H17:20 The Achaemenid Empire and Its Western Borderlands: Cosmopolitanism and Impact
Julian Degen, University of Innsbruck

H17:40 Achaemenid Owls? Northern Anatolia between Athens and Persia
Leah Lazar, University of Manchester

H18:00 Coffee break

H18:20 King at Home, Satrap in Persia? Reflections on the Titulature of Power in Hecatomnid Lycia
Marco Ferrari, Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes (IFEA) / Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Koç University

H18:40 Divine and human honours for satraps and generals. The cities of Asia Minor and their models of behaviour in the 4^th century BC
Roberta Fabiani, University of Roma Tre

H19:00 Roundtable

Julian Degen studied Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck. In 2020 he completed his PhD under the supervision of Robert Rollinger on Alexander the Great and his empire. He has taught Ancient History at the Universities of Hildesheim and Kiel and held a postdoctoral position at the University of Trier. In 2025 he was appointed Professor of Ancient History at the Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck, with a research focus on empires and historiography. He is a key researcher in the Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations,” vice chair of the Melammu Project, and a core member of the PERSIAS project in Norway. He has recently completed his habilitation on Strabo and imperial geographies.

Leah Lazar is Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester, having completed her doctoral and postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford. She researches the political and economic history of the Greek world, with a strong interest in Achaemenid Anatolia. Her first book, Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford University Press 2024), offers a new perspective on the relationship between the Athenian Empire and subject communities, including those at the interface of Athenian and Achaemenid influences. Her new book (part of the ERC-funded CHANGE project in Oxford) analyses the complex interaction between imperial powers and smaller communities in ancient Anatolia through the lens of the monetary economy, in a series of case studies from Archaic Lydia and the invention of coinage, through to the coming of Rome.

Marco Ferrari (1996) earned his PhD in Ancient Greek History and Achaemenid Studies at Sapienza University of Rome and the École Pratique des Hautes Études–PSL (Paris). His main research interests focus on the relations between the Greek world and the Achaemenid Persian Empire (6th–4th centuries BC), with particular attention to processes of acculturation among Greek, Iranian, and Anatolian communities in Asia Minor. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes (IFEA) and at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED, Koç University) in Istanbul, where he is conducting a project on the integration of Iranian and local elites in north-western Anatolia.

Roberta Fabiani is Professor of Greek History at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre. Her main interests are the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods, with a focus on Greek epigraphy. She has contributed to a number of studies on Caria and the city of Iasos and has been entrusted by the Inscriptiones Graecae project of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften with the new edition of IG XIV for Magna Graecia.

Cinzia Tuena is currently pursuing a PhD in ancient history at the University of Basel, having previously studied in Zürich and Oslo. In 2025/26, she holds a Fellowship at the Istituto Svizzero in Roma and is affiliated as a Visiting Scholar at the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre in support of her research, which centres primarily on gender structures and dynastic power, with a geographical emphasis on Asia Minor. Her thesis examines the familial networks of the Hekatomnids, focusing on the political and symbolic functions of sibling marriages. Working with epigraphic sources, she explores how these practices shaped authority, identity, and legitimacy at the intersection of Persian and Greek cultural spheres in the fourth century BCE.