Ancient History—the history of the Classical world of Greece and Rome, including those wider areas conquered by Alexander the Great and others later forming parts of the Roman Empire—involves the study of both texts and material remains surviving from the Mediterranean and adjacent lands. 

The University of Leicester has a long and distinguished record of teaching and researching Ancient History, and the School now has one of the largest groups of specialists in the UK. The ancient historians themselves work with the material record as well as texts, and collaborate closely with the large team of Mediterranean archaeologists within the School.

Core Staff

Lin Foxhall, Constantina Katsari, Andy Merrills, Naoíse Mac Sweeney, Gillian Ramsey, Graham Shipley, Dan Stewart

Staff interests range in location from western Asia through the whole of Mediterranean lands, and in time from the late Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The ancient historians’ research projects, in particular, span from ancient texts via social history, administrative networks, geographical understandings of the world, political landscapes, rural and trading economies, identity formation, material culture. For the research interests of the Mediterranean archaeologists see  ‘Greek Archaeology’ and ‘Roman Archaeology’.

Key Research Projects

• Pseudo-Skylax’s Circumnavigation and other Greek geographical works (GS)
• The Nile in Western Imagination (AM)
• The impact of Macedonian rule in the Peloponnese in the third century BC (GS)
• Gender in antiquity (LF)
• Networks in the Seleucid empire (GR)
• Landscapes of hellenistic and Roman Greece (DS)
• Monetary circulation in the Roman empire (CK)

Publication highlights

Lin Foxhall: Olive Cultivation in Ancient Greece (2007); ‘Gender’, in K. A. Raaflaub and H. van Wees (eds), A Companion to Archaic Greece (2009), 483–507
Naoíse Mac Sweeney: Community, Identity, and Archaeology (in press)
Andy Merrills: History and Geography in Late Antiquity; (with R. Miles) The Vandals (2010)
Gillian Ramsey et al. (eds): Seleukid Dissolution (in press)
Graham Shipley: The Greek World after Alexander (2000); Pseudo-Skylax’s Periplous (2011)
Dan Stewart: ‘The rural Roman Peloponnese’, in A. D. Rizakis et al. (eds), Society, Economy and Culture under the Roman Empire.

Exploring Ancient History at postgraduate level at Leicester

Ancient historical approaches, data and theory are embedded strongly in the two MA programmes on The Classical Medieterranean and Rome and Its Neighbours.  Our expertise makes the School an ideal venue at which to pursue doctoral research. PhDs on Ancient History are undertaken by both campus-based study and Distance Learning, or a combination of modes. Recently completed PhD theses in Ancient History include a study of the Gauls or Celts of Asia Minor (Duncan Campbell); astronomy in ancient Greek religion (Efrosyni Boutsika); temple alignments and western Greek identity (Alun Salt); taverns and wine consumption in classical Greece (Clare Kelly-Blazeby); identity in Romano-British towns (Tom Rust); dyeing and dyeworks in ancient Greece (Mark Monaghan); late Roman motherhood (Mary Harlow); and privacy within the ancient Greek house (Sam Burke); material culture approaches to the study of childhood in the Roman world (Katie Huntley).

Current students are exploring topics such as the role of the gymnasion in the formation of Greek identities after Alexander the Great; Greeks, Etruscans, and Phoenicians in Spain; the historical implications of Hellenistic pottery assemblages; Egyptian temple alignments and their influence on Greece; funerary ritual and family in 2nd millennium Mesopotamia; Roman Cyrenaica; the economy of Roman North Africa; and the development of the kingdom of Kush. 

Postgraduate Study

Postgraduate Research Pages