And so farewell!* To Göteborg (and its unbelievable range of amazing imperial stouts, above all), to the European Social Science History Conference for another two years, and, slightly abruptly, to my role as one of the co-chairs of the Antiquity network of said conference. I think I’ve been doing that role for about ten years – the fact that it involves only short bursts of activity every other year, rather than anything more sustained, means I keep forgetting. On the one hand, it isn’t a huge task and it does offer the chance to try to gather ancient economic and social historians together to exchange ideas and, occasionally, remind historians of other periods that we exist, plus an excuse for visiting some great European cities; on the other hand, I can imagine that from the outside it might look a bit like an attempt at hanging onto a position of power and influence, gate-keeping and extending patronage etc. Which it never has been, but that still meant it was starting to feel like time to pass things on to someone else. It’s just been a bit quick, from an informal chat with a potential successor one day to realising next evening that this was my last time co-organising our bit of the conference. The dogs bark; the cavalcade moves on. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘ancient history’
Everyone Is Everybody Else
Posted in Musings, tagged ancient history, ESSHC, globalisation, historical theory on April 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Concepts, Methodologies and Theories
Posted in Publications, tagged ancient history, historical theory, historiography, social science on September 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I am celebrating – very quietly, as I very much doubt that any fees were paid to the original publishers – the appearance of the Iranian translation of my old Theories, Models and Concepts book; partly, it is nice that anyone still thinks it might be useful, and mostly I just find the script so beautiful even if I can’t understand a word of it. Apparently my name gets transliterated as Noobil, which I rather like… I did write a short preface for the translation, reflecting on the writing of the original, and since I imagine that few of the small number of people who might be interested in this will actually be able to read Farsi, it makes sense to reproduce it here…
A History of Classical Greece from So Long to I Guess, Potami
Posted in Musings, tagged ancient history, autocorrect, captions on May 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Recent end-of-year discussions of the experience of online teaching, combined with contemplation of what next year might be like, reminded me that I meant to post a summary of the best of autocaptioning. Maybe this can be a permanent replacement for the annual festival of exam errors that some academics are so fond of celebrating; these are so much stupider, and create far more work… (more…)
My Name Is…
Posted in Musings, tagged ancient history, classical studies, classics on April 2, 2020| 13 Comments »
There’s nothing like an enforced lockdown in the middle of a global pandemic to force someone like me – not antisocial, exactly, but inclined to assume that others are happy to get on with their lives without me imposing on their precious time – to start making contact and reinforcing connections. Longer emails for family and close friends, regular social media contact for everyone else – with a powerful sense of how far I’m already a member of a couple of really important online communities, consisting mainly of people I’ve never met in person, that are now even more important.
One of the things this has brought home is how downright weird some of the algorithms have become. (more…)
Hot Rocks and Fazed Cookies
Posted in Musings, tagged ancient history, publishing on January 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Very many years ago, when I was writing up my PhD, I was hired by an eminent ancient historian to do some preparatory work for the publication of a volume of their selected articles, including making recommendations on which of their numerous important contributions should be included. The utterly rubbish nature of my performance in this task can be deduced from the fact that said volume didn’t appear until years later, thanks to someone else’s work, with no trace at all of my efforts, and generally I try not to think about it too much because of the embarrassment. But reflecting on the experience does raise some interesting questions today. (more…)
Invisible Borders
Posted in Musings, Publications, Research in Progress, tagged ancient history, counterfactualism, Croatia, Europe, open access on October 31, 2017| 5 Comments »
I’m just back from a weekend break in Croatia, a trip that was partly about the glorious food and excellent Zagreb craft beer scene, partly about the history and architecture, and mostly about giving a seminar and lecture at the University of Zagreb, hosted by Jelena Marohnic, and also being interviewed by the history students’ journal. The latter was especially nerve-wracking, with a strong sense of the risks of putting my foot in it inadvertently through sheer ignorance of local circumstances, without having had the opportunity to think about any of the questions in advance. Why are they so concerned about the chronological boundaries of ‘ancient history’? How does the ‘ethnicity in Roman Britain’ debate look from here – and was it a good or bad thing that I didn’t until afterwards think to chuck in a remark to the effect that Roman Pannonia and Dalmatia must have been equally multicultural? (more…)
Sphinx 