Rate My Professor Julia Feehan

Julia Feehan holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Otago and is currently a Master's student in the Department of Classics at the University of Otago. Her honours thesis, completed in 2024 under the supervision of Gwynaeth McIntyre, was entitled "Life in the Oldest Profession: Examining the Lived Experience of Roman Sex Workers." This research examined the social and everyday experiences of Roman sex workers, contributing to scholarship on marginalized groups in ancient Rome.

Julia Feehan's MA thesis, titled "An Investigation into the Daily Lives and Relationships of Domestic Enslaved Women in Ancient Rome," is supervised by Hannah Sorscher and Gwynaeth McIntyre. The project examines the social relationships and networks of domestic enslaved women in Republican and Imperial Rome, including their daily lives, gendered expectations, sexuality, and place in the domestic sphere and wider Roman society. Although studies have examined enslaved men and women as a group, there is little research on the relationships between enslaved women themselves and how these shaped their daily lives. Feehan draws from the palliata comedies of Plautus and Terence, Roman law, and material evidence such as graffiti, epigraphy, and tombstones. She addresses biases in literary sources by elite Roman men to illuminate the lived experiences of enslaved women in Roman households. In addition to her postgraduate research, Feehan serves as a Service Representative at AskOtago, the University of Otago's support service in the St David II Building, Dunedin.