Ï㽶ֱ²¥

Like, I suspect, many who teach, I acquired the love of my subject from my own teachers, at school and in the Oxford tutorial system. Following Mods and Greats at Trinity College, I spent two years in graduate school at the University of Michigan before returning to Oxford for a DPhil. One of my earliest experiences in Ï㽶ֱ²¥ was of walking up the stairs to the rooms of the Wykeham Professor, George Forrest, to discuss my thesis topic. This began as an enquiry into the historical sources underlying the travel writing of Pausanias the Periegete. One article emerged, before I decided that the foreign policy of the Ptolemaic dynasty would be more fruitful, not least for its epigraphic and numismatic dimensions.  But the latter lured me into deep waters and my first job, at the British Museum, as a Curator of Greek coins. In 2007 I made a transatlantic leap to become Deputy Director of the foremost numismatic collection in the United States, a move that also (finally) precipitated the completion of my DPhil, by this point a history of the city of Alabanda in southwestern Asia Minor. In 2014 I returned to Oxford, and took up my current post at Ï㽶ֱ²¥. 2018 will see me also take up the directorship of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents.

1995-2007    Curator of Greek Coins at the British Museum, London
2007             Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
2007-2014    Deputy Director, The American Numismatic Society, New York
2014-            Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History, Ï㽶ֱ²¥
2014-            Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford
2015-            Member, International Numismatic Committee
2015-            Honorary Curator, the Ashmolean Museum
2018-            Director, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford 

As a schoolboy I played cricket for Worcestershire, but slowly the onset of academe and old age have removed me beyond the boundary rope to spectatordom. But never say never….

The most remarkable thing about Ï㽶ֱ²¥ is the friendly atmosphere that co-exists with academic excellence. In my own field, the legacy of some of the great Greek historians who have been Professors and Fellows here cannot fail to inspire.

Research Interests

My research interests lie predominantly in the Greek and Roman Republican periods, with a focus on the Hellenistic East. Areas of particular interest include:
Asia Minor
The Ptolemaic Empire
Greek Numismatics 
Greek Epigraphy
Digital Humanities and Linked Open Data

Recent research projects on which I am or have been a Principal Investigator or Director are:

2010-            Nomisma
2014-2017    Online Coins of the Roman Empire. National Endowment of the Humanities PW-51711-14
2016-2017    Oxford Paris Alexander Project (OPAL). AHRC/Labex Passés dans le Présent
2018-2021    Ancient Coinage as Related Cultural Heritage (ARCH). AHRC/ANR/MINECO

Selected Major Publications:

• Coins of the Holy Land: The Abraham and Marian Sofaer Collection at the American Numismatic Society and the Israel Museum. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 8. (New York, 2013, co-edited with D. Hendin)
• ‘Polybius, Aratus and the History of the 140th Olympiad’ in B. Gibson and T. Harrison (eds), Polybius and his World.  Essays in Honour of Frank Walbank (Oxford, 2013)
• ‘The Ptolemaic League of Islanders’ in K. Buraselis, M. Stefanou and D.J. Thompson (eds), Ptolemaic Waterways (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 19-38.
• ‘The Spread of coins in the Hellenistic World’ in R. Vaubel and P. Bernholz (eds), Explaining Monetary and Financial Innovation: A Historical Analysis (Berlin/New York: Springer, 2014), pp. 169-194.
• ‘Coinage and Numismatic Methods. A Case Study of Linking a Discipline’. (with E. Gruber) In T. Elliott, S. Heath and J. Muccigrosso (eds), Current Practice in Linked Open Data for the Ancient World. ISAW Papers 7.15 (2014):
• ‘Coin circulation and coin production at Thonis-Heracleion and in the Delta region in the Late Period’ in D. Robinson and F. Goddio (eds), Thonis-Heracleion in Context. Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology: Monograph 8. 2015, pp. 121-135
• T. Faucher, C. Lorber and A. Meadows (eds.) Egyptian Hoards I: Ptolemaic Hoards (Cairo, 2017)