Fenella Palanca

Fenella is a PhD candidate on the Ancient History track. She completed her Bachelor of Psychology at the University of Sydney with a major in Ancient History, composing an honours thesis for both fields. Her Master’s dissertation, entitled Counting Sheep: Textile Production and Consumption in Republican Italy, examined the scale and structure of the fabric economy during the Roman Republic. Using the literary, quantitative, and archaeological material, she argued that the textile industry operated at a higher level of intensity and complexity than what scholars have tended to assume, driven by the largely invisible labour of enslaved women. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of quantitative, economic, and feminist history, which she hopes to pursue through the study of women’s labour in ancient Rome.