Associate Professor of Classical Studies; Chair, Ancient History Graduate Group
Education:
- Master of Environmental Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2014
- PhD, Classics, St John's College, Cambridge, 2002
- Master of Philosophy, Ancient History, University of Sydney, 1997
- Bachelor of Arts, Ancient History and Archaeology,
University of Auckland, 1994
Research and teaching interests:
- Roman social, economic, agrarian and legal history, particularly in the late antique period
- Nonelite and marginal populations, especially in rural contexts
- Disasters, their causes, impacts, implications and aftermaths
- Interactions between human populations and their physical environments
- Legacies of ancient Rome in American cultural, political and intellectual discourses
Current excavation:
Roman Peasant Project, Cinigiano, Tuscany (codirected with Kim Bowes, Mariaelena Ghisleni and Emanuele Vaccaro)
Selected publications:
- Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside, Cambridge University Press (2011)
- "Slavery in the Late Roman World," in K. Bradley and P. Cartledge, eds., The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The Ancient Mediterranean World, Cambridge University Press (2011), 482–509
- "Civil War? What Civil War? Usurpers in the Historia Augusta," in C. Damon, B. Breed and A. Rossi, eds., Citizens of Discord: Rome and its Civil Wars, Oxford University Press (2010), 87–101
- "Contextualizing Colonatus: The Origo of the Late Roman Empire," JRS 97 (2007) 155-175
Work in progress:
- "Exploring Connectivity by Modeling Mobility around a Roman Landscape in Tuscany," (coauthored with J. Mathieu, A. Arnoldus-Huyzendfeld, A. Pattachini, and M. Ghisleni)
- "Dimensions of Disaster in the (Late) Roman World: The Vesuvius Eruption of 472 CE"
- "How to Treat an Emperor: Norton I in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco"
Recent courses:
- Undergraduate
- Ancient Rome
- Structures of the Roman Empire
- Disasters in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Graduate
- Problems in Roman History
- Roman Law
- Ancient Economies
