BATH (BAlnea & THermae) is an international research network of scholars specialising in ancient baths and bathing habits. The aim of the network is to facilitate contacts between bath scholars worldwide, to stimulate cooperation and knowledge transfer among international scholars and to promote the research on baths among scholars and among a wider audience. It was created in the wake of the international conference ‘Roman Baths and Agency’, which took place in the Academia Belgica in Rome, 18-20 October 2023, on the initiative of the conference organizers Sadi Maréchal and Konogan Beaufay. This new network follows in the footsteps of the International Association for the Study of Ancient Baths (IASAB) which was active in the 1990s and published the newsletter Balnearia. The driving forces behind IASAB, Inge Nielsen and Janet DeLaine, kindly gave their support to this new network and have permitted us to restyle their logo and publish the issues of Balnearia in digital format on this website. Hubertus Manderscheid offered much appreciated help in compiling and scanning all the issues.  

The focus of the BATH-network is on Roman-style baths, covering a period between the early second century BC and the late sixth century AD, and spanning the entire Roman Empire and its limitrophe areas of influence. Nonetheless, in advocating a maximal diachronic contextualisation of Roman-style baths, the network also takes an interest in baths and bathing habits beyond these chronological and geographical focal points. The bath buildings and bathing traditions (which themselves evolved throughout the Roman period) cannot be detached from earlier developments and did not instantly disappear when the Empire disintegrated. The BATH-network centres on ‘conventional’ bathhouses as opposed to thermomineral baths, which are the focus of the ‘Healing Spas in Antiquity’ network.