Walter Scheidel
Walter Scheidel | |
|---|---|
 Scheidel at theWorld Economic ForumAnnual Meeting of the New Champions in 2012 | |
| Born | 9 July 1966 Vienna,Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Historian |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
Walter Scheidel(born 9 July 1966) is anAustrianhistorianwho teachesancient historyatStanford University,California.Scheidel's main research interests are ancientsocialandeconomic history,pre-modernhistorical demography,and comparative and transdisciplinary approaches toworld history.[1]
Biography
[edit]From 1984 to 1993, Scheidel studied Ancient History andnumismaticsat theUniversity of Vienna,where he obtained his doctorate in 1993. In 1998, he completed his habilitation at theUniversity of Graz.From 1990 until 1994, he worked as an administrative and research assistant at the University of Vienna. As anErwin SchrödingerFellow of the Austrian Research Council, he spent 1995 as a visiting scholar at theUniversity of MichiganinAnn Arbor.From 1996 to 1999, he wasMosesand Mary Finley Research Fellow in Ancient History atDarwin College, Cambridge.During this period, he also served as visiting professor at theÉcole des Hautes Études en Sciences SocialesinParisand theUniversity of Innsbruck.
Scheidel moved to the United States in 1999, where he initially held visiting positions at Stanford University and theUniversity of Chicago.In 2003, he took up his current position in the Department of Classics of Stanford University, where he was promoted to professor in 2004 and received an endowed chair, the Dickason Professorship in the Humanities, in 2008. He is also a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Stanford's Human Biology program.
Scheidel has published five academic monographs and over 200 papers and reviews and has edited or co-edited fifteen other books. He is co-editor of a monograph series forOxford University Pressand was co-founder of thePrinceton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics,[2]the world's first online repository for working papers in that field.[3]In May 2012, Scheidel and Elijah Meeks launched the interactive website ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World.[4]He has been awarded a New Directions Fellowship of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and aGuggenheim Fellowship,and is a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Reception
[edit]The Great Levelerwas shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize 2017[5]and for theFinancial Timesand McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2017.[6]One ofThe Economist's Books of the Year 2017,[7]it was selected byMartin Wolfas hisFinancial TimesSummer Book of 2017.[8]William Easterlywrote in a review ofThe Great Leveler,which argues that violence is the main contributor to declines in inequality, that "the great virtue of the book is to present a lot of evidence on both sides for the readers to judge the thesis for themselves."[9]
TheFinancial Times[10]and theEvening Standard[11]namedEscape from Romeone of their best books of 2019. In his review, Robert Colvile noted that although “Scheidel has to do an awful lot of heavy lifting” in his book, it “is a measure of Scheidel’s talent and dedication that, by and large, he succeeds.”[12]Escape From Romewas panned by fellow historianFelipe Fernández-Armestowho accuses Scheidel of wholesale oversimplification, "cutting through the chaos of real life and dismissing its messiness."[13]Paolo Tedesco of theUniversity of Tübingen,reviewing the book, described it as "stimulating [and] thought provoking", although he considered that its historical arguments were not convincing.[14]
Works
[edit]Publications
[edit]- Grundpacht und Lohnarbeit in der Landwirtschaft des römischen Italien,Frankfurt: Lang, 1994,ISBN3-631-47904-2
- Measuring Sex, Age and Death in the Roman Empire: Explorations in Ancient Demography,Ann Arbor:Journal of Roman Archaeology,1996,ISBN1-887829-21-0
- Debating Roman Demography,Leiden: Brill, 2001 (editor),ISBN90-04-11525-0
- Death on the Nile: Disease and the Demography of Roman Egypt,Leiden: Brill, 2001,ISBN90-04-12323-7
- Ostrakismos-Testimonien I: Die Zeugnisse antiker Autoren, der Inschriften und Ostraka über das athenische Scherbengericht aus vorhellenistischer Zeit (487–322 v. Chr.),Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 2002 (co-editor),ISBN3-515-07947-5
- The Ancient Economy,Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and New York: Routledge, 2002 (co-editor),ISBN0-7486-1322-6
- The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 (co-editor),ISBN978-0-521-78053-7
- The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium,New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (co-editor),ISBN978-0-19-537158-1
- Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires,New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (editor),ISBN978-0-19-533690-0
- The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 (co-editor),ISBN978-0-19-921152-4
- The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 (editor),ISBN978-0-521-89822-5
- The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean,New York: Oxford University Press, 2013 (co-editor),ISBN978-0-19-518831-8
- State Power in Ancient China and Rome,New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 (editor),ISBN978-0-19-020224-8
- Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 (co-editor),ISBN978-1-107-08920-4
- On Human Bondage: After Slavery and Social Death,Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017 (co-editor),ISBN978-1-119-16248-3
- The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017,ISBN978-0-691-16502-8
- The Science of Roman History: Biology, Climate, and the Future of the Past,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018 (editor),ISBN978-0-691-16256-0
- Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019,ISBN978-0-691-17218-7
- The Oxford World History of Empire,New York: Oxford University Press, 2021 (co-editor),ISBN978-0-197-53397-0
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Personal websiteat Department of Classics, Stanford University
- ^Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics
- ^Ober, Josiah; Scheidel, Walter; Shaw, Brent D.; Sanclemente, Donna (2007). "Toward Open Access in Ancient Studies: The Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics".Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.76(1): 229–242.doi:10.2972/hesp.76.1.229.ISSN0018-098X.JSTOR25068017.
- ^ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World
- ^“The Cundill History Prize”
- ^"Best Business Books: 2017".Financial Times.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^"Books of the Year 2017".The Economist.2021-12-09.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^"The FT on books to read this summer".Financial Times.2017-06-23.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^Easterly, William (2019)."Review of Walter Scheidel's The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century".Journal of Economic Literature.57(4): 955–971.doi:10.1257/jel.20191477.ISSN0022-0515.
- ^"Best books of 2019: Economics".Financial Times.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^"The best books of 2019".Evening Standard.2019-12-23.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^Colvile, Robert (2019-10-18)."Escape from Rome by Walter Scheidel Review – How Rome's Fall Supercharged the West".Sunday Times.Retrieved2021-03-20.
- ^Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2019-10-23)."'Escape From Rome' Review: Charging Ahead ".Wall Street Journal.ISSN0099-9660.Retrieved2020-04-18.
- ^Tedesco, Paolo (2021-02-25)."The Roman Road to Capitalism and the Rise of the West".Jacobin.Retrieved2021-02-26.
External links
[edit]- Personal websiteat Department of Classics, Stanford University
- Stanford Profilesat Stanford University
- Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics– PDF papers on ancient demography and economy
- ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World
