Research Bio

Emily Mackil is a historian of the ancient Greek world in the period c. 600-200 BCE. Her first book, Creating a Common Polity: Religion, Economy, and Politics in the Making of the Greek Koinon (Berkeley, 2013), examines how interactions in the religious, economic, and political spheres fostered the development of federal states and were in turn protected and promoted by federal institutions. It won the Goodwin Award of the Society for Classical Studies (2016). She is the co-editor of Greek Epigraphy and Religion (Leiden, 2021). Her current research investigates the norms and practices surrounding property ownership in the Greek polis and its surprising economic implications. She has published papers in recent years on the problem of property confiscation in ancient Greece, the use of stochastic modeling to estimate uncertain quantities in the historical past, and the connection between writing and the assertion of property claims, to name just a few. 

Mackil’s scholarship integrates epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and literary evidence with political and economic theory to analyze how institutions fostered cooperation, governance, economic choices and the performance of economies in antiquity. Her work has advanced historians' understanding of federalism, economic integration, and the role played by property ownership and confiscation in the development of the ancient Greek economy.

She is Professor of History at UC Berkeley and a faculty member (and former Director) of the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology and the Aleshire Center for Greek Epigraphy. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Archaeology, Chiron, and numerous peer-reviewed, edited volumes. Mackil has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. At Berkeley, she teaches Greek history, epigraphy, and ancient political institutions, mentoring students in classical studies and ancient history.

Research Expertise and Interest

ancient history, political economy, social and economic history, federalism, Greek epigraphy, numismatics