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/