Livia’s Room – Researching, Reflecting, Staging brings together a collection of essays on both the subterranean room of the Villa di Livia at Prima Porta and the Nordic interdisciplinary, cross-aesthetic project ‘Livia’s Room’. Rooted in the worlds of ancient and contemporary Rome, the project culminated in the performance Livia’s Room, which premiered in Bergen in 2022.

Through dialogues between scholars and artists, this book explores how history can be communicated and reimagined across disciplines. How can scholarly research inspire creative practice, and how can art, in turn, open new ways of understanding the past? The meeting of perspectives, methods, and practices lies at the heart of this volume.

Like the project itself, the book transcends genres and invites readers to enter the dialogue between art and research. It includes texts from a wide range of artists and scholars, as well as the full text of Lene Therese Teigen’s play Livia’s Room, accompanied by photographs from the 2022 performance and of the beautiful frescoes that once adorned the walls of Livia’s subterranean room in Prima Porta.