Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Finland
fellow
Franco De Angelis
Home institution
University of British Columbia
Country of origin (home institution)
Canada
Discipline(s)
Ancient history
Archeology and prehistory
Theme(s)
Cities & States
Migration
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Franco De Angelis is Professor of Greek History and Archaeology and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia. In his teaching and research, he has developed cross-cultural, interdisciplinary methodologies that employ all types of evidence and various theoretical tools to help interpret them. His research has focused on expanding the narrow story we have traditionally told about the ancient Greeks by addressing their overlooked migrations, especially to Italy.
Research Project
Why Rome? A Long-Term Comparative Perspective
To explain why Rome succeeded in creating the ancient world’s largest empire, De Angelis’s project aims to take a long-term comparative perspective that is novel on the research landscape and better suited to overcoming the limitations of currently used sources and approaches. He employs archaeology – often the only contemporary ancient evidence as his primary research material – and looks at the eight centuries (1000–200 BC) before the fully formed Roman Empire. De Angelis uses a comparative sociological perspective to reveal key organizational and institutional differences between the various regional competitors that existed during Rome's rise to empire.
Research Interests:
Ancient Greek mobilities, migrations and diasporas; interregional and intercultural contact; global antiquity; empires in Sicily, Italy, and the pre-Roman Western Mediterranean; multi- and interdisciplinary methods and theories; cross-cultural, comparative, and anthropological and sociological methods and theories; decolonizing the Classics and reception of the ancient world in the New World, including in British Columbia