Walter Scheidel

For Walter Scheidel's curriculum vitae, click here. Scheidel's research focuses on ancient social and economic history, with particular emphasis on historical demography, slavery, and state formation. More generally, he is interested in comparative and transdisciplinary approaches to the study of the ancient world, and is trying to build bridges between the humanities, the social sciences, and the life sciences. 

The most frequently cited active-duty Roman historian in the US adjusted for age, he is the author or (co-)editor of 13 books and over 180 chapters, articles, and reviews, and has lectured in 22 countries. His most recent books include The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy (in press, ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State (in press, co-edited with Peter Bang), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (2010, co-edited with Alessandro Barchiesi), Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (2009, ed.), The Dynamics of Ancient Empires (2009, co-edited with Ian Morris), and The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (2007, co-edited with Ian Morris and Richard Saller). He is currently preparing a monograph on ancient empires for Oxford University Press and a general survey of ancient demography for Cambridge University Press, and is editing State Power in Ancient China and Rome and co-editing The Oxford World History of Empire (2 vols., with Peter Bang and Chris Bayly) and Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States (with Andrew Monson). He has launched an international research initiative for the comparative study of ancient Mediterranean and Chinese empires, co-founded the Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, is preparing the interactive web site Orbis: A Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, and is a co-editor of the monograph series Oxford Studies in Early Empires.