Professor Alan Bowman FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 1994
- Subjects
- Archaeology, Classics
- Sections
- Classical Antiquity , Archaeology
Summary
At Oxford University, Professor Bowman has held the posts of Student (tutorial fellow) of Christ Church (1977-2002), Camden Professor of Ancient History (2002-2009) and Principal of Brasenose College (2010-2015). His main area of research is the social and economic history of the Roman Empire, with a particular interest in the documentary evidence of the Greek papyri for Egypt and of the Vindolanda Writing-tablets for northern Britain. He also has a strong interest in digital scholarship and Information Technology as it relates to the visualisation and decipherment of damaged documents. He was the founder of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at the University of Oxford and served as Director until 2018.
Major research projects in which he is currently involved are:
- The Corpus of Greek and Bilingual Inscriptions of Ptolemaic Egypt (CPI), an updated edition of about 600 inscriptions from Egypt between Alexander the Great and the death of Kleopatra.
- The Oxford Roman Economy Project, quantifying growth and decline in the economic performance of the Roman empre from c. 200 BC to AD 350.
- The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets, continuing work on imaging and deciphering unpublished tablets Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Vol.IV, Part 1, The Wooden Writing-tablets.
He was Vice-President (Humanities) of the British Academy from 2014-2018.
Past appointments
Brasenose College, University of Oxford Principal
2010 - 2015
University of Oxford Camden Professor Emeritus of Ancient History
2002 - 2009
Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies President
2001 - 2005
Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, University of Oxford Founding Director
1995 - 2018
Christ Church College, University of Oxford Senior Censor
1988 - 1990
University of Oxford University Lecturer in Ancient History
1977 - 2002
Univesity of Manchester Lecturer in Ancient History
1972 - 1977
Rutgers Assistant Professor of Classics
1970 - 1972
British Academy appointments
Humanities Vice President
2014 - 2018
Publications
The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production
Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson - Published in 2013 by Oxford University Press
Images and Artefacts of the Ancient World
Edited by Alan K. Bowman and Michael Brady - Published in 2005 by Oxford University Press/British Academy
The Vindolanda writing tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses III)
Alan Bowman - Published in 2003 by British Museum Press
Agriculture in Egypt, from Pharaonic to modern times
Alan Bowman - Published in 1999 by Oxford University Press/British Academy
Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 BC - AD 642: From Alexander to the Arab Conquest
Alan Bowman - Published in 1986 by British Museum Press
Other Fellows of the British Academy
Professor Michael Squire FBA
Ancient Greek and Roman art and archaeology; classical literature, culture and thought; visual-verbal relations; classical traditions and reception; theologies of art; cultural history of ornament; history of aesthetics
