For Lorena Atzeri, researching Roman law is an act of discovery. “My idea of research is very much the idea of a kind of archeological excavation,” she says. “I like excavating and bringing to light something that was not known before. . . . That’s my need for originality—communicating and offering something new.” That spirit of illumination defines her career as a legal historian and her recent fellowship at the Robbins Collection Research Center, where she spent the summer of 2025.
A lecturer and research fellow at the University of Milan’s Faculty of Law, Atzeri studies Roman law in late antiquity; the evolution of Roman law scholarship, especially in Great Britain; and Byzantine legal sources. “I like working in research libraries,” she explains, “and I like researching correspondence—the interesting exchanges between scholars.” Her work integrates outstanding scholarship with practical legal acumen. An experienced lawyer and member of the Milan bar, with specialization as a notary, she has dedicated over three decades to teaching and mentoring students, notably pioneering the first Roman Law class taught in English at the University of Milan Faculty of Law.
Her monograph Diritto romano dal deserto: Percorsi editoriali di papiri giuridici nella prima metà del Novecento examines the collaboration between papyrologists and Roman law scholars in early twentieth-century Oxford and Cambridge, revealing how they reconstructed legal texts from ancient papyri. More recently, she has uncovered extensive correspondence between British and Italian law scholars such as William Buckland and Salvatore Riccobono, whose letters offer insight into early modern legal debates. Her recent article on “infamy, reputation, and defamation in late antiquity” builds on her earlier research into how Roman law codified punishment for corruption and administrative wrongdoing. A forthcoming article titled “The Hexabiblos: The Humanist Quest for the Text” traces the editorial history of a fourteenth-century Byzantine legal handbook through the efforts of humanist scholars from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.
During her 2025 Robbins Collection Research Center fellowship this past summer, Atzeri joined the Center’s long-term project to collect and publish the writings of David Daube, the distinguished Roman law scholar and former director of the Robbins Center. Working closely with Director and Distinguished Professor of Law Laurent Mayali, she helped structure the upcoming seventh volume, contributing an introduction and reviewing and proofreading the manuscript of selected texts. Reading Daube’s work in chronological order is important, she says, to follow the evolution of his scholarship and methodology.
The fellowship also strengthened Atzeri’s broader research on twentieth-century Roman law studies in Britain, particularly among émigré scholars such as Daube, Fritz Schulz, and Hermann Kantorowicz. “For me, it was an enrichment—a personal enrichment,” she reflects. Visiting Berkeley for the first time, she found both the campus and the Robbins Collection Research Center inspiring. “It was wonderful,” she recalls. “The Robbins Center was quiet and the ideal environment for concentrating on research.”