I am Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK. I work on a number of different themes in the study of classical antiquity and its relation to the present: the economic, social and ecological history of the ancient world (e.g. Trade in Classical Antiquity [2007] and The Roman Empire: roots of imperialism [2010]); the reception of antiquity in modern social and economic thought (Antiquity and Modernity [2009]) and especially the modern influence of the ancient Greek historian and political thinker Thucydides (Thucydides and the Idea of History [2014]); and historical theory and methodology (Theories, Models and Concepts in Ancient History [2004] and Alte Geschichte Schreiben [2014; English original 1999]). I am currently working on a book on Marx and Antiquity.

As Einstein Visiting Fellow, I visit Berlin for several weeks at least three or four times a year, to meet with members of the project team, discuss their work, exchange ideas and develop plans for future activities; I also help to advise several of the doctoral students on their research. This project connects with several of my current interests; with the work of Thucydides, most obviously, the way he seeks to make sense of the upheavals and transformations around him, and how his ideas about using the past to understand the present and anticipate future developments could be useful for us today; but also my focus on the structures and dynamics of the ancient economy, the ways in which it developed in response to conditions of instability and uncertainty, and the extent to which it underwent change in the course of the classical period.

Neville Morley's blog on "Exploring Antiquity and Modernity" can be found here.