Jakob D. Jung

SAD to Go – Everyday Mobility of Asymmetrically Dependant Romans

During my stay at BCDSS, I develop a project to research the everyday mobility of asymmetrically dependent Romans. In the Roman world, travelling was both restricted and of large socio-economic significant. 

Nevertheless, sources, including papyri, inscriptions, and literary texts, attest to Romans in strong asymmetrical dependency (SAD) travelling in their everyday life, for example, as traders, prostitutes, or companions. Modern literature has focused on slave trading, mobility restrictions, and social ascent. My project aims to systematically examine the socio-material conditions of everyday travel practices in SAD relationships. In this regard, the concept of asymmetrical dependencies can help transcend the still dominant slavery-freedom binary of Graeco-Roman mobility.

During the fellowship, the project conceives a framework that puts post-colonial theory on archival silences and intersectionality in dialogue with approaches to ancient material culture. To connect the SAD approach directly to the Roman evidence, I ask 1) which travellers in SADs appear in the sources? 2) How did they travel? 3) How do the sources present such travellers? 4) How did mobility challenge or reinforce SADs? Based on these questions, I review the existing historiography and select suitable case studies from fragmented alternative archives (e.g., graffiti, inscriptions, and artefacts) and elite-produced sources (e.g., monuments, literature, and legal texts) in Roman Africa and the Rhineland.

2023–2025
Research MA in Historical Studies, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands

2022
Minor Abroad, University of Oslo, Norway

2021–2023
Honours Academy Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands

2020–2023
BA in Comparative European History, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands

2025
Research Internship PRESERVARE project, Huygens Instituut Amsterdam, Netherlands

2023–2025
Research Assistant, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands