Alumnae spotlight: Dr Hannah Platts

Dr Hannah Platts, Class of 1998

Hannah Platts is a Senior Lecturer in ancient history and archaeology. Her research interests revolve around the material culture and social history of ancient Rome, particularly the factors which impact status display and social hierarchies in the Roman domestic sphere. Her first book, Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome: Power and Space in Roman Houses (Bloomsbury 2019), examined the physical experience of daily life and ritual in the Roman house. By looking at diverse sensory experiences, such as sound, smell, touch, taste and sight, it investigated how Roman house owners manipulated bodily experiences in their dwellings to display social standing. As well as investigating the lived experience of Roman houses, her forthcoming book Villas and Values: The Cultural and Competitive Lives of Rome’s Elites (Routledge) explores the luxury villas of mainland Italy and their role in constructing social perceptions of elite self-identity and what it actually was to be ‘elite’ in the Roman world.

Hannah’s fascination with multisensory research has also led her to examine how digital and immersive technologies can be used to recreate fragile and fragmentary historical sites and artefacts to bring to life past eras for today’s audiences and museum visitors. As part of this, she collaborated on a research project entitled Sensations of Roman Life, where she helped build an immersive virtual reality model of a townhouse and neighbourhood from Roman Silchester using excavation reports to recreate not just the buildings but also the sounds and smells that reflected the archaeological finds of daily life in and around the dwelling. Building on this, Hannah has collaborated with numerous museums and heritage sites in the UK, including Historic Royal Palaces, Jorvik Viking Centre and Fishbourne Roman Palace in the UK and the Franklin Institute and Colonial Williamsburg in the US to explore the use of immersive and digital technologies in cultural institutions to develop visitor experience and widen participation, accessibility and diversity amongst audiences. Most recently, Hannah has worked with colleagues in the creative and heritage industries to develop a world-first multisensory augmented reality trail-based clue game about the Mary Rose for mobile phones, which draws on sounds, smells and sights of the sinking of Henry VIII’s favourite warship. This immersive historical game won an Innovation Award at this year’s global tech, music, film, and culture festival South by Southwest (SXSW 2023).

Hannah enjoyed studying ancient history at the University of Bristol, but it was doing her undergraduate dissertation on the Roman villa at Sperlonga in Italy that really cemented her love of Roman art and architecture, making her realise that she never wanted to stop exploring and researching antiquity – and she hasn’t!

We caught up with Hannah for a Q&A session:

What aspects of Croydon High School did you enjoy and find most rewarding?

There was a lot that I loved about Croydon High School. I joined Croydon High when I was four years old and left when I was 18 – so it became almost like a home from home to me. That familiarity was important, giving me the chance to make lifelong friendships that still mean everything to me today. What I found most rewarding about my time at school was the ability to participate in activities outside the classroom. Although I wasn’t great at sports, there were many other opportunities to take advantage of – I relished the chance to be in plays, musicals, drama festivals, orchestras and choirs. Taking part in these really helped develop my confidence, and the skills these opportunities have given me in public speaking and performing have proved fundamental to my career as a lecturer.

What did you aspire to whilst at school?

My career aims varied considerably while at school but were always centred around what I loved learning about. I knew from early on that I wanted to go to university, and it was in Senior School, when I started to study History and Latin, that I began to think about what I might want to do once I left Croydon High. A school trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace and a later one to Pompeii helped crystalise my ideas and made me sure that ancient history was the path I wanted to take at university. The rest, as they say, is history – or, more accurately for me, ancient history!

How did Croydon High School empower you for your future?

Everyone says that having a good education is important for opening the doors to one’s future – and they are absolutely right. What’s interesting, though, when I look back on my time at Croydon High, it’s not just that it showed me so many options for my future. It also gave me the wherewithal to take up those opportunities and not be scared to push myself outside my comfort zone by trying new and different things. Whether it was Duke of Edinburgh, singing in an opera, doing drama and music festivals and exams, the more I learnt and had the chance to experience at school, the more I realised what I could do. Crucially, school taught me not to be afraid that sometimes things might not always work out as expected. Just as with success, failure is a fact of life. We will all, at some point, make mistakes, and we will all, at times, fail at things. Croydon High gave me the supportive space to learn both how to deal graciously with success and, importantly, how to overcome failure by getting back up, dusting yourself down and learning from that experience without letting it define you.

What has been your proudest moment?

Now that’s a tough question! I think there are a few things that I am pretty proud of having done – mainly because initially, I didn’t think I could achieve them, but then I decided to give them a go, put my mind to it – and succeeded. So, getting my first-class undergraduate degree, university prize, and PhD have been really important to me. More recently, publishing my book Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome and being awarded an Innovation Award from the South by Southwest 2023 technology, film and culture festival (SXSW2023) for collaborating on a project to develop a world-first multisensory augmented-reality history game app for mobile phones. Together, these make me smile when I think about them. 

What are your hopes for the future?

To be happy and healthy, surrounded by the people who mean the world to me and for them to be happy and healthy too. If I can have that in my future, then I’ll have everything I could possibly want.

What would you say to your 15-year-old self?

Most importantly, I’d tell her not to worry and try to relax and enjoy what life brings. Everyone wonders about what they are doing and whether they have made the right choices – that’s natural, but things have a way of working themselves out for the best, often when and how you least expect it. I’d also tell her not to judge herself compared with others. We are all individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, and we can’t all be amazing at everything. Everyone works differently and with diverse skill sets: for some, maths might be their gift, but for others, it’ll be languages or music, chemistry or history. So I’d tell her – be confident in you, in your abilities and your approach to life and work. So long as you are doing your best and striving to be your best – you are doing great!

Beyond that, I’d let her work it out – because trying different things and discovering new experiences is, I think, the joy of life. 

Thank you Hannah,wonderful advice for us all!

Mrs Karen Roe
Alumnae Relations Manager