Team
Dr Gianluca Foschi
Gianluca Foschi is the Post-Doctoral Historical Research Associate at Newcastle University for Rome Transformed.
His research interests focus primarily on the history of architectural design and the interplay between architecture, landscape, and settlements. His PhD in Archaeology and Classics, completed at Newcastle University, analysed the relation between ancient conceptions of music and architecture, with a focus on intentionality. In particular, it examined the use of ratios derived from ancient harmonics in the architecture of late antique Mediterranean, their philosophical, practical, and aesthetic significance, and their modern interpretations. He is currently investigating the history of multisensorial perception, the history of applied mathematics, and the design of acoustics in the past. Finally, his research explores the links between archaeological sites, memory, and hegemonic dynamics, and how ideologies, politics, and economy shape historiography and our interpretation of the past.
Gianluca has a background in cultural anthropology (BA from the University of Bologna), archaeology (MA from the University of Bologna), and music (Music Academy in Rimini). His methodology combines historic, historiographic, and palaeographic research with detailed analyses of archaeological sites using digital technologies such as 3D laser scanning, 3D modelling, CAD and GIS and room acoustics simulation.
He has organised a complete laser scanning survey and new archaeological fieldwork at S. Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna, conducted by Newcastle University’s McCord Centre for Landscape (scientific direction: Professor Sam Turner) in collaboration with the Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, the Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna, and the University of Bologna. He has collaborated on several archaeological projects, including the Apalirou Environs Project, Naxos (directed by Professor Sam Turner). He is currently reconsidering the design system of iconic late antique monuments such as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and collaborating with Newcastle University’s McCord Centre for Landscape, the Jarrow Hall: Anglo-Saxon Farm, Village, and Bede Museum, and The Archaeological Practice Ltd for archaeological projects on Britain from pre-history to the present. For Newcastle University’s Lateran Project, he investigated the acoustics of the Lateran basilica on a 3D digital model designed by Professor Ian Haynes, Iwan Peverett, Professor Lex Bosman, and Professor Paolo Liverani, and this will be continued within Rome Transformed.
