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Bailey Benson is Visiting Assistant Professor of Roman Art at ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½. An art historian and archaeologist, she specializes in the material culture of the Roman Empire, focusing on how monuments and imperial portraiture shaped cultural memory, identity and political authority. Her research examines how visual and textual representations functioned as tools of personal and collective memory in antiquity.

Benson earned her Ph.D. in the History of Art & Architecture from Boston University in 2025. Her dissertation, “What’s in a Face? Reframing the Expressive Portraiture of Third-Century Roman Emperors,” explores how sculptors used intensified facial expressions, altered physiognomies, and dynamic compositions to construct imperial legitimacy and emotional engagement. Combining methodologies from art history, archaeology, ancient philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and spatial analysis, she investigates how the Roman public experienced portrait statues as enduring symbols of power and legacy.

Her research has been presented at the College Art Association and in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, and her forthcoming chapter, “Sculpting Space, Shaping Memory: The Evolving Imperial Sculptural Program of the Sebasteion at Boubon,” will appear in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity XVI (Routledge). Her work has received support from the Lemmermann Foundation, Boston University’s Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship and the BU Arts Initiative Graduate Research Grant.

Benson is also an experienced museum professional. She served as the Stavros Niarchos Fellow in Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, contributing to the development of its Roman Portrait Gallery and interpretive materials, and has held curatorial roles at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Tufts University Art Galleries and the Princeton University Art Museum.

Her archaeological fieldwork spans the Mediterranean and Near East, including the Gabii Project (Italy), Azoria Project (Crete), Morgantina South Baths Project (Sicily), Omrit Excavation Project (Israel) and the French Excavation at Bi’r Samut (Egypt). Across her research, teaching, and curatorial practice, Benson investigates how ancient visual culture forged memory and identity—and how these practices resonate in contemporary conversations about history, heritage and legacy.