Shalom Yabilsu-Anyaduba and Maggie ten Berge are Assistant Professors at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan (USA). They come to their collaboration with shared interests in human rights—both ancient and modern. Shalom is a multidisciplinary communication designer, educator and researcher whose work focuses on how existing and emergent technologies can serve as tools for social change and community development. Maggie is a Roman economic historian and archaeologist whose work focuses on the ways that ordinary people were drawn into and affected by the machinery of empire.