My research focuses on the history of the Roman empire. My first book, Imperial Ideals in the Roman West (Cambridge, 2011), examined the figure of the Roman emperor as a unifying symbol for the western empire, and argued that the widespread circulation and replication of a particular set of imperial ideals, and the particular form of ideological unification that this brought about, not only reinforced the power of the Roman imperial state, but also increased the authority of local aristocrats throughout the western provinces, thereby facilitating a general convergence of social power that defined the middle Roman empire.
I have also written on and maintain interests in the material and visual cultures of the Roman empire; the topography and urban history of the city of Rome; textual production and aristocratic self-representation in the early empire; political thought in the Roman world; and comparative empires.
Education
PhD, Ancient History, University of Pennsylvania, 2001
BA, History, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
