Research Bio

Susanna Elm, FBA, is Sidney H. Ehrman Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Departments of History and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies.  Her current research focuses on the reality of enslavement  in the later Roman empire and its impact on the formulation of core Christian tenets, especially in the writings of Augustine of Hippo.  Now that her volume The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule (in Late Antiquity) is scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2025 with UC Press, and the volume she co-edited with Kristina Sessa,  War and Community in Late Antiquity, about to go into production with Cambridge Press, she will return to her new old project: Augustine the Economist: Enslavement, Taxation, and Original Sin.

Research Expertise and Interest

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