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Degree(s)

BA Modern History (Oxford)

MPhil Medieval History (Cambridge)

PhD History (Cambridge)

Research interests

My research focuses principally on the history and archaeology of northern Africa in Late Antiquity (c.300-700). During my Bye Fellowship I will be exploring the development of royal power in Aksumite Ethiopia as it is revealed in the inscriptions, coinage and archaeology of the region and textual sources from elsewhere. I am particularly interested in comparing the political and social institutions of this region with contemporary developments elsewhere in Africa, particularly in Nubia (modern Sudan), the Sahara and the Maghreb.

My previous work has focused on the Maghreb (approximately modern Tunisia, Algeria and coastal Libya), from the later Roman period to the Islamic conquest, with particular attention to the kingdom of the Vandals as the ‘Moorish’ or ‘Berber’ societies rose to prominence at the same time. I have also worked on ancient and early medieval geographical thought, and particularly on the expression of geographical understanding through non-traditional media (including landscape paintings, statuary, poetry, triumphal displays and architecture). 

Teaching Interests

I do not currently have teaching duties at Caius. In the (distant) past, I used to supervise on Roman and early medieval history for the History and Classics Faculties. More recently, my teaching has been as a Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leicester, where I teach all aspects of Roman history. 

Publications

Epic, War and Rebellion in Byzantine North Africa: A Historical Study of Corippus' Iohannis (Cambridge University Press, 2023). 

Roman Geographies of the Nile. From the Late Republic to the Early Empire. (Cambridge University Press, 2017.) Pbk reprint 2021. 

The Vandals. Blackwell Peoples of Europe. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). (with Richard Miles). Pbk reprint 2012.

History and Geography in Late Antiquity. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 64. (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Pbk reprint 2008. 

(ed.) Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa. (Ashgate, 2004.). Routledge reissues 2014, 2017.