New York University

New York University

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

Roger Bagnall
Director
Professor of Ancient History
Curriculum Vitae
List of Publications

Before joining the NYU faculty in 2007, Bagnall was Jay Professor of Greek and Latin and Professor of History at Columbia University, where he had taught for 33 years. During that time he served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Department of Classics. Educated at Yale University and the University of Toronto, he specializes in the social and economic history of Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique Egypt. He has held many leadership positions in the fields of classics and papyrology; he is co-founder of a six-university consortium creating the Advanced Papyrological Information System. Among his best-known works are Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993), The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994; with Bruce Frier), and Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (1995). He has also edited many volumes of papyri and other ancient texts. He directs NYU-Columbia's joint excavation project at Amheida in the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Académie Royale de Belgique, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy.

 

Alexander Jones
Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity
Professor of Mathematics (Associated Faculty, Courant Institute)

Alexander Jones studied Classics at the University of British Columbia and the history of the ancient mathematical sciences in the Department of the History of Mathematics at Brown University. Before coming to NYU, he was for sixteen years on the faculty of the Department of Classics and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. His work centers on the history and transmission of the mathematical sciences, especially astronomy.

He is the author of several editions of Greek scientific texts, among them Pappus of Alexandria's commentary on the corpus of Hellenistic geometrical treatises known as the "Treasury of Analysis"; an anonymous Byzantine astronomical handbook based on Islamic sources; and a collection of about two hundred fragmentary astronomical texts, tables, and horoscopes from the papyri excavated a century ago by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus. His current research interests include the contacts between Babylonian and Greco-Roman astronomy and astrology, the Antikythera Mechanism and other artifacts of Hellenistic astronomy, and the scientific work of Claudius Ptolemy. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and recipient of several awards and honors including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Francis Bacon Award in the History of Science.

 

During its first few years, the Institute plans to recruit an additional five to ten members of the faculty. The following advertisement is appearing in a variety of venues in fall, 2007:

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (ISAW), plans to make a number of faculty appointments during the coming several years. ISAW is a newly created, specially funded, cross-disciplinary institute for research and graduate education in the history, archaeology, and culture of the entire Old World, including Asia and Africa, from late prehistoric times to the eight century AD. The fields and rank of these appointments and the pace of hiring are open, but all appointments will be tenured or tenure-track. We seek individuals of scholarly distinction or promise in any relevant field whose work will benefit from freedom from departmental structures and the stimulation of working closely with colleagues in other disciplines, approaches, periods, or geographical areas and who are committed to helping develop the intellectual life of such a community. Applicants with a history of interdisciplinary exchange are particularly welcome. The Institute's initial faculty will be closely involved in creating its graduate program, which will emphasize individual supervision, and in building its library. The faculty will also be involved in choosing a group of visiting researchers each year.

Applications (letter, curriculum vitae, and list of referees) or nominations should be sent to Professor Roger S. Bagnall, Director, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 15 East 84th St., New York, NY 10028. Review of candidates will begin on November 1, 2007. Founded in 1831, New York University is the largest private university in the country, with 13 schools, 3 institutes, and nearly 40,000 students. New York University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.