My research interests range across the Roman, late Roman and early medieval periods, although I specialise in the role of invective and abuse in all forms of politics and the formation of authoritative knowledge in late antiquity. This includes working on a number of early Christian writings that have traditionally been seen as part of Patristics.

Having previously spent several years looking at the role of polemic in the political culture of the later Roman empire, more recently I have been working on the growth of late-antique heresiology in the context of classical notions of the ordering of knowledge, which will be the subject of my upcoming monograph entitled The Authorised Version of Heresy. During 2015-16, I held an AHRC Early Career Fellowship for a project entitled Cataloguing Damnation: The Birth of Scientific Heresiology in Late Antiquity, which has resulted in a number of articles on this subject. I have also recently edited the Cambridge Companion to Christian Heresy and, together with Professor Morwenna Ludlow, I edited a volume entitled Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity (OUP, 2020), which resulted from conferences held at Exeter in 2015 and 2016.

As part of my AHRC Fellowship, I recorded a series of interviews with academics about surprising and unfamiliar aspects of the ancient world entitled The Distant Pasts, which are available to listen to as podcasts.

I am currently working with an international team of scholars on a project entitled Connecting Late Antiquities. This involves digitising and linking a wealth of different prosopographical materials for late antiquity, including making the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire available online (with the kind permission of Cambridge University Press). The project has received an AHRC-DFG grant for 2023-25, allowing these initial activities to be completed. Together with colleagues, I am currently editing The Brill Companion to Roman Prosopography, as well as volumes on Constantinian Representations and Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity, both of which will be published by Liverpool University Press.

If you're an undergraduate looking to write a final-year dissertation or a potential applicant considering doing an MA or PhD thesis on a late-antique topic (or anything else Roman that sounds fun), then please send me an email and I'll be happy to discuss your ideas with you.

Biography:

Originally from Sheffield, I did my BA, MPhil and PhD at Clare College, Cambridge. After I finally stopped being a student in 2007, I took up a Research Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and then a Temporary Lectureship at Sheffield, before coming to Exeter in 2012.