I am a late Roman historian and work on the political and institutional history of the empire between the second and fifth centuries AD, with a special interest in how one can read textual sources against the background of other evidence. My first book was a study of Roman and post-Roman Spain that tried to set the small body of written texts against the background of material culture; my second looked at the impact of Roman imperialism on neighboring territories and argued that the history of the barbarians, specifically the Goths, can be understood entirely as a response to Roman imperialism. More recently, The Triumph of Empire (2016) and The Tragedy of Empire (2019) explore the history of the Roman world within its larger Eurasian context. I am presently at work on a number of projects, including a history of the Latin chronicle tradition from its beginnings to the fifth century AD, in four volumes, one of which appeared in 2013, in collaboration with R.W. Burges; and a new annotated translation of Ammianus Marcellinus for the Landmark ancient histories in collaboration with Gavin Kelly. I continue to contribute regularly to the London Review of Books.

Grants and Fellowships:

Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (2015-2016)
Principal Investigator, NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant for A Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus (2015-2019)
Principal Investigator) ACLS Collaborative Research Grant for A Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus (2013-2016)
ACLS Burkhardt Residential Fellowship, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC (2009-2010)