Research Expertise and Interest

history of the Later Roman Empire, pagan - Christian interactions, ancient medicine, slavery and the evolution of Christianity, leadership and empire, reception of antiquity

Research Description

Susanna Elm is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor in the Department of History, and a Corresponding Fellow with the British Academy.  Her current research focuses on the reality of slavery in the later Roman empire and its impact on the formulation of core Christian tenets, especially in the writings of Augustine of Hippo.  She is in the process of completing  a manuscript  tentatively entitled The Emperors's Eunuch: Political Unity, Manliness, and Imperial Representation in the Theodosian Age, and is working on war and community and communal decision making and deliberative participation in the later Roman empire in concert with the BCSR project Voting the Divine.