Bryan Ward-Perkins

Bryan Ward-Perkins works on the late Roman empire and the immediately post-Roman period.  His primary focus was initially on urban and economic history, using both textual and archaeological evidence (he has excavated a number of sites in Italy, though for many years he has not been a practising field archaeologist). He co-directed the Last Statues of Antiquity project, funded by the AHRC, examining where, how and why statues were used in the period circa 250-600, and why these important features of urban life dwindled in number, and eventually disappeared.  He is currently the Principal Investigator on a European Research Council project charting and investigating the origin and early development (up to around AD 700) of the 'Cult of Saints' across all of Christendom's linguistic groups: http://cultofsaints.modhist.ox.ac.uk/