DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY
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About the department
Research
Neville Morley
Professor of Ancient History
Leader of the University Research Theme on Reception
Phone: external (+44) (0)117 928 8657
Research
Professor Morley's main research interests are in the economic, social and ecological history of classical antiquity, particularly trade, demography, urbanisation and agriculture; in the reception of antiquity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economic and social thought, especially the critiques of modernity developed by Marx and Nietzsche; and in theoretical and philosophical approaches to historiography, including its narrative structures and rhetorical techniques.
He has recently written Antiquity and Modernity, on the mutual interdependence of those concepts during the 'long nineteenth century' (Blackwell, 2008), and The Roman Empire: roots of imperialism (Pluto Press, 2010) about Roman imperialism and its modern reception and influence. He is currently leading the four-year AHRC-funded research project on Thucydides: reception, reinterpretation and influence, which will include the production of a Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides and a monograph on Thucydides and the Idea of History.
Research Supervision
Topics studied by his past and present research students include the city in Britain and Gaul in late antiquity, the nature of the economic crisis of the third century, mos maiorum in Livy's account of the Hannibalic War, the reception of Thucydides in 18th century France and in 20th century strategic studies, the image of Sparta in the thought of Montaigne and the influence of ancient accounts of plague on modern representations of disease. Professor Morley would be happy to discuss potential PhD research on any aspect of ancient economic and social history or historical theory.
Teaching
This year he is teaching Approaches to Ancient History, World of Late Antiquity, Legacy of Classical Literature and Ecology & History. .
Recent Publications
- 'Peter Handke's Thucydides', in Classical Receptions Journal 4.1 (2012)
- Demography and development in classical antiquity', in C. Holleran & A. Pudsey, eds., Demography and the Graeco-Roman World: new insights and approaches (Cambridge: CUP 2011), pp. 14-36
- 'Monumentality and the meaning of the past in ancient and modern historiography', in A. Lianeri, ed., The Western Time of Ancient History: historiographical encounters with the Greek and Roman past (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), pp. 210-26.
- The Roman Empire: roots of imperialism (Pluto Press: 2010)
- 'Urbanisation and development in Italy in the late Republic', in L. de Ligt & S. Northwood, eds., People, Land and Politics: demographic developments and the transformation of Roman Italy (Brill: 2008)
- Antiquity and Modernity (Blackwell: 2008)
- '"Das Altertum das sich nicht übersetzen lässt": translation and untranslatability in ancient history', in A. Lianeri & V. Zajko (eds.), Translation and the Classic: identity as change in the history of culture (Oxford: OUP, 2008), 128-47.
Full list of publications.
Inaugural Address
For the text of Professor Morley's inaugural address (20 January 2010), click here (pdf, 190 kb).