3 Nov 2026
Classicist Verena Schulz studies how people use language to persuade others, shape history and reshape collective memory. Since April, she has held the Chair of Classical Latin at LMU Munich.
It may come as a surprise that the great Roman orator Cicero struggled to make himself heard as a young man. His voice was too weak to carry through the long speeches he delivered in court or before the Roman Senate, so he sought advice from a renowned voice teacher on the Greek island of Rhodes. Here he learned how to use his breathing and his abdominal muscles more effectively, for example. “A strong voice was a clear advantage for anyone pursuing a political career in ancient Rome,” Professor Verena Schulz explains.
“I am fascinated by how people persuade themselves and others of their views, and how they have used their voices, language and literature to do so – from antiquity to the present day,” Schulz says. Her main research interests include ancient rhetoric and Roman historiography. “Cicero’s example shows just how important the spoken word was in Roman society,” the classicist explains. “To persuade others, you not only had to find the right words: You also had to deliver them effectively.”
Prof. Dr. Verena Schulz
© PrivatSchulz studied general rhetoric, Latin philology and Medieval German language and literature at the University of Tübingen. She then earned a master’s degree in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. In 2012, she received her doctorate in Latin and Greek philology from LMU Munich, where she completed her habilitation in classical philology in 2018. Her postdoctoral research project won an award from the Munich University Society. Research stays have taken her to the universities in Berkeley, Princeton, Seattle and Amsterdam, among other places. After working as a research associate at Heidelberg University, she accepted a professorship at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt before returning to LMU Munich in 2026.
In Munich, Schulz is investigating topics such as the role of rule-breaking in rhetoric. “Then as now, guides to rhetoric laid out rules for delivering effective speeches,” she explains. “In practice, however, there are many cases in which breaking those very rules makes a speech especially powerful – for example when speakers suddenly raise their voices despite all recommendations to the contrary, or even burst into tears.”
Schulz is conducting research as part of The Rhetoric of Rule-Breaking: Successfully Challenging the Norm, an interdisciplinary network funded by the German Research Foundation. Her network examines violations of established conventions across a range of fields, from classical studies and law to journalism and contemporary political communication. “Some projects, for example, examine calls to order directed at members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the German Bundestag, while others investigate rule-breaking by a Dutch right-wing populist,” Schulz says. Researchers are exploring why such violations can sometimes make a speech more effective, as well as the role rhetorical, moral and political rules play in society today compared to their significance in antiquity.
Since the 1990s, cultural memory has been the subject of extensive research, but forgetting has often received comparatively little attention. Yet forgetting has frequently been used as a deliberate strategy to change how events or individuals are perceived. That has been done from ancient Rome to the present day.Prof. Dr. Verena Schulz
Schulz also examines how people deliberately shape their understanding of the past, including how individuals and societies consciously allow certain events to fade from memory. “Since the 1990s, cultural memory has been the subject of extensive research, but forgetting has often received comparatively little attention,” she says. “Yet forgetting has frequently been used as a deliberate strategy to change how events or individuals are perceived. That has been done from ancient Rome to the present day.”
As a lawyer, Cicero sometimes found himself defending people he had previously prosecuted, Schulz explains. “He would then use rhetorical techniques to downplay these contradictions and steer his audience’s attention toward other aspects of the case.” Another strategy was to reframe negative qualities through language. What might initially be described as “greed,” for example, could suddenly become “thrift,” to cultivate a different perception in the mind of the audience.
The Roman emperor Nero is another example of how the image of a historical figure can change over time. “Nero was actually quite popular with the people, partly because of his enthusiasm for music, theater and public performances,” Schulz explains. Later historians, including Tacitus, nevertheless portrayed him as an emperor whose artistic ambitions and public appearances were incompatible with the dignity of his office. Schulz investigates how such accounts shaped the historical memory of public figures and pushed their more positive qualities into the background.
Political speeches and public debates repeatedly demonstrate how carefully selecting, reframing or omitting information can paint specific pictures of the past.Prof. Dr. Verena Schulz
According to Schulz, these strategies remain relevant today. “Political speeches and public debates repeatedly demonstrate how carefully selecting, reframing or omitting information can paint specific pictures of the past.” Studying antiquity can help us better understand how these techniques work. To investigate them, Schulz combines close analysis of individual words and expressions in ancient texts with theories from literary studies, linguistics and cultural studies. “Sometimes I work through hundreds of passages to determine how a particular term was used in ancient Rome and what it meant in different contexts.”
Schulz attaches particular importance to sharing ideas with researchers from other disciplines and with her students, who continually bring new questions and perspectives to her work. The academic diversity at LMU was one of the reasons she was eager to return. “Even during my previous time in Munich, I greatly valued the opportunity to share ideas with researchers from other fields.” Since returning, she has established contacts with scholars in Slavic studies, for example, where researchers are investigating the political rhetoric of Vladimir Putin. Talking to researchers who work on other languages and cultures can also open up new angles. “Even a concept that may seem as self-evident as forgetting is not necessarily understood in the same way everywhere.”
Apart from occasional discoveries of papyri or the deciphering of previously unknown inscriptions, scholars in classical philology work with a largely established body of surviving texts. “Yet even works that have been known for centuries can be viewed from new perspectives,” Schulz says. Her own research on strategic forgetting demonstrates how new questions can bring previously overlooked aspects of familiar works to light. “Ancient texts still have a great deal to tell us today,” she notes. “But for that to happen, we need to ask the right questions.”