Staff in Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

I am passionate about Ancient History and what it can teach us about the modern world. Learning how to analyse ancient sources gives us the critical thinking skills we need to evaluate the many forms of information we come across in our daily lives.

I am an ancient historian specialised in the history and political life of the Roman Republic. My research focuses on republican politics in the City of Rome, Roman oratory, all aspects of Cicero, and Roman approaches to the past. I have a strong interest in political oratory across historical periods – including current British political speech – and am the founding director of the Ne ...

I have a long-standing fascination with three areas – language and linguistics, especially Latin and the Romance languages, the early history of Christianity, and the reception of the Graeco-Roman world in modern English literature and culture. In my work at Birmingham, I'm privileged to be able to combine these areas of interest with students and colleagues, and I'm always glad to hear ...

Henry’s research interests centre on the later prehistoric period, and particularly the relationships between human activity and environmental change within past landscapes and focusing on wetland sites. He specialises in the use of digital technologies to enable the modelling and analysis of the wide range of information required for such study to engage with past sites and landscapes.

Thi ...

Roman political and social history of the Republic and Early Empire, focusing on Imperialism, peace, and diplomacy.

Archie Dunn is a Member of the Council of the British School at Athens, the Committee of the Cotton Foundation and  the editorial board of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. He directs the Survey of Ancient Thisve/Byzantine Kastorion (Central Greece)in collaboration with the Greek Archaeological Service.

I use archaeological and anthropological perspectives to explore prehistoric social life and cultural expression, focussing on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain and north-west Europe.  My main areas of interest are funerary practices, ritual, monumental architecture, material culture, personhood and landscape, with a strong commitment to fieldwork as a means to investigate prehistoric ...

I was trained as a philologist (Ancient Greek and Latin; Byzantine and Modern Greek), and my research focuses on Greek intellectual culture. I work on Greek lyric poetry, and my research interests also include ancient literary criticism, ancient Greek scholarship, music and dance in antiquity, Plato, and the Peripatetics.

The main focus of my teaching and research is the ancient Greek city-states, particularly their interstate relations and institutions.

I am an archaeologist with expertise in the Greek Archaic to Classical periods. I work with historical and archaeological data to reconstruct the lives of rural non-elite individuals and communities in the Greek world to learn more about the interrelationships between physical, social, and cultural landscapes.

I teach and research in Greek and Latin literature, particularly epigram and Greek writers in the Roman Empire; ancient books on papyrus; and the reception of classical antiquity in modern culture.

I am a Lecturer in Egyptology with an interest in the application of social and cultural anthropology to the study of ancient Egypt. My work focuses on kinship and marriage in the Middle Kingdom and on the social construction of monumental spaces. I am also a field archaeologist and have been working at the site of Dayr el-Barsha in Middle Egypt since 2012.

Daniel Reynolds is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine History with research interests in the material and visual culture of the Byzantine empire, the Byzantine and early Islamic Levant (c.350-c.1099), “iconoclasm” and the history of peasant and non-elite communities (c.400-1000). He is co-director of the project “At the Crossroads of Empires: the Longobard Church of ...

I am a Roman historian who teaches and researches on the city, city life and religious change in the Roman world and in particular late Roman North Africa.

David Smith’s main research interests concern the interpretation of insect remains from the archaeological record. He uses insect remains to investigate landscape and land-use change as well as living conditions in archaeological settlements. David has over 25 years’ experience providing commercial consultancy on insect remains from a range of archaeological sites in the UK and ...

I am primarily interested in what we think Romans thought about themselves (as reflected in texts), how they conceptualized themselves as a people, and responded to (and were shaped by) the world they lived in.

I enjoy investigating how identity and cultural politics are manifest through narratives emphasising space, territory, cultivation of place, and ethos. I research authors and texts ...

My research interests are in two main areas: Roman poetry of the Republic and Principate, and the reception of classical culture and literature in contemporary film and literature.

Maria Vrij is curator of the coin collection at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, which comprises over 16,000 objects, most of which are Byzantine, but also includes around 5,000 Roman coins. In this role she facilitates academic research and teaching (undergraduate, postgraduate, and schools outreach) with the collection.

Maria’s research interests mainly concern the coinage of the ...

Ken Wardle is expert in the archaeology of prehistoric Greece and ancient Macedonia and has directed and taken part in field projects in many parts of Greece.