This lecture will be based on his current research project exploring the wild, dynamic, and sweeping Atlantic façade of the Roman world.

In the context of the Roman empire as a whole, the Atlantic rim—a macro-region that traces a natural arc from southern Ireland and southwest Britain, across the Atlantic littoral of Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Strait of Gibraltar and the far northwestern corner of the African continent—may be seen as a sort of ecological “frontier,” defined by the ocean itself.

This Atlantic façade has been ignored in studies of the Roman empire as a political and economic system—unrecognized, it seems, as a coherent geographical unit of historical analysis. Leading to monograph The Roman Atlantic: Dynamics of an Ocean Frontier investigating the long-term history of the Roman Atlantic with special attention to frontier zones, political economy, commercial networks, and provincial cultures and identities.