Dr Dirk Booms is a Curator of Roman architecture and inscriptions at the British Museum. He studied Classical Archaeology at Leuven, and did his doctoral research at Cambridge. After teaching at Cambridge, Oxford, and Birkbeck College he joined the British Museum. His main interest is Roman architecture, but include sculpture, in particular the Townley collection and the Museum’s cast collection. He has participated in excavations in Belgium, and the Mediterranean and is finalising the publication of the architectural fragments, design, and reconstruction of the imperial villa of Marcus Aurelius at Villa Magna, Italy.