Dr S. Betjes (Sven)

Teacher of Information Skills at the Faculties of Social Sciences, Arts, and Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies; Collection Specialist for Ancient and Medieval History. Currently also involved in making the numismatic collection of Radboud University physically and digitally available for education and research purposes.

My research has focused on the way ancient expressions of power were culturally embedded, which I have particularly studied for coinage and road-building in the Roman empire. Each in their own way, coins and roads were anchored in the beliefs, customs and ideas of the various peoples that lived around the Mediterranean. By recognizing these attempts of making political expressions recognizable to their target audience, we may understand the workings of power in a culturally heterogeneous empire. Indeed, their result was a sense of cohesion that was essential to the successful establishment (and maintenance) of larger power structures such as the Hellenistic Kingdoms and the Roman Empire. In a way, the way the ancients dealt with these matters is not so far removed from the modern day: modern coins still feature communicative strategies first employed in antiquity, whereas roads are still commonly used for political expression – be it as a symbol of prestige for modern regimes or as a venue for showcasing political dissent.

In 2022, I defended my PhD dissertation on the development of the iconography on Roman imperial coinage between 27 BCE and 491 CE at Radboud University. Before that, I studied in Groningen, Ghent, and Oxford. During my studies, my main focus was on cultural interaction in the Hellenistic Mediterranean and the Phoenician-Punic world, with a particular interest in numismatics.