Professor Simon James

I read archaeology at the London Institute of Archaeology where I also took my PhD. I spent ten years at the British Museum first as an archaeological illustrator and then as a museum educator responsible for programmes relating to the later prehistoric and Roman collections before returning to university research and teaching. Having held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship at Durham I joined the School in January 2000 was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2002 Reader in 2005 and Professor in 2012. Since 2012 I have also been President of the Ermine Street Guard.

My main interests are Rome and its neighbours societies from Ireland to Iran ancient conflict and visual representation in archaeology. I direct the collaborative international Ancient Akrotiri Project in Cyprus, a venture in maritime archaeology. My long-standing research interest in Dura-Europos the 'Pompeii of the East' also continues.

James, S.T., L. Blue, A. Rogers and V. Score 2021. 'From phantom town to maritime culturaI landscape and beyond: Dreamer's Bay Roman-Byzantine 'port', the Akrotiri peninsula, Cyprus, and Eastern Mediterranean maritime communications,' Levant.

James, S.T. and S. Krmnicek (eds), 2020, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Roman Germany, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

James, S.T., 2019, The Roman Military Base at Dura-Europos, Syria: An Archaeological Visualisation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

James, S.T., 2018. 'Warriors, war and weapons, or: arms, the armed, and armed violence', in Colin Haselgrove, P.S. Wells and K. Rebay-Salisbury, Eds, Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age, Oxford, OUP (digital publication Sept. 2018), 1-24.

James, S.T., 2015 'Visual competence: in archaeology, a problem hiding in plain sight,' Antiquity 89:347, 1189-1202.

James, S.T., 2014, 'The "Romanness of the Soldiers": Barbarized Periphery or Imperial Core?' in L. Brody and G. Hoffman, Eds, Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of Empire, Boston, MacMullen Museum of Art, 91-107.

The archaeology of conflict and military institutions, especially 'the Roman Army'
The archaeology of the Roman provinces and related cultures

I have now retired from campus-based teaching, but continue to teach Distance Learning modules on the Roman world.

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