During the roundtable of the international conference ‘Roman Baths and Agency’ (Rome, October 18-20, 2023), bath scholars from around the world agreed that there was a dire need for a platform that would enable scholars working on the topic to meet, communicate, exchange and collaborate. A small group of engaged specialists set out to create this international network and launch an accompanying website.

This site intends to be at once the visible side of the actions of a core team and a larger network of scholars working on Roman baths and bathing culture (and eventually on earlier and later baths as well); a platform to promote interaction between all these scholars; a place to find news on recent developments and activities in the field of bath studies; and the locale from which all updates on our project of a large database of bath buildings will be announced.

As of 6 May 2024 site is fully operational, and we invite you to:

• Meet the members of the core team,
• Find a colleague or a (nearby or distant) scholar working on bath buildings (and to let us know should you wish to be added to the list),
• Explore the published regional studies on bath buildings and find comparanda for your own research,
• Look up the glossary of terms related to bath architecture, should you need help to describe your own structures (in English),
• Find the archive of the Balnearia series, published by the International Association for the Study of Ancient Baths (IASAB), a predecessor of this initiative that was active in the 1990s,
• Contact us should you wish to contribute in any way, be it by being added to the list of scholars, completing the glossary, filling in an entry for a bath building (to be fed to the forthcoming database), or anything you may think of. Thank you!