Professor Samuel Gartland
- Position: Professor of Ancient History
- Areas of expertise: Ancient Greek history; Greek archaeology; Boiotia and Thebes; regional history; Peloponnesian War; Alexander and the Hellenistic world; Persia; comedy; slavery and subordination; Pausanias.
- Email: S.D.Gartland@leeds.ac.uk
- Location: 1.51 Michael Sadler Building
Profile
I studied at Oxford and Leeds before teaching Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and later returning to Leeds. I have won teaching awards at both institutions, and especially enjoy helping students find new ways of asking questions about the ancient world and its continuing relevance.
Research interests
My work explores ancient history and archaeology through the experiences of people whose lives are only faintly visible in the surviving record: those who lived with marginalisation, subordination, or the everyday pressures of violence and conflict. I am interested in how space, sensory experience, and social power shaped human behaviour, and in developing approaches that allow us to understand the lives of individuals and communities often left at the edges of traditional narratives. This research ranges from comedy to community life, from the effects of warfare on ordinary people to the many forms of vulnerability that shaped existence in the ancient world. Working across the first millennium BCE and throughout the eastern Mediterranean and its neighbouring regions, I aim to bring new perspectives to bear on the lived experiences of those whose stories are only partially preserved.
Books:
• Boiotia in the Fourth Century B.C. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
• Voiceless, Invisible and Countless in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2024)
• Reassessing the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
• Aristophanes and the Current Moment (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Current Research
• The Worlds of Alexander the Great (with Dr Simon Glenn): examines the impact and legacy of Alexander III of Macedon through archaeology and material culture.
• Subordinates and Subordination in Ancient Greece (with Professor David Tandy): investigating the lived experience and social mechanisms of subordination across Greek communities.
• The Peloponnesian War (with Professor Robin Osborne): re-evaluating the conflict through new methods and sensory/spatial perspectives.
• Aristophanes and the Current Moment (with Professor Constanze Guthenke): exploring the contemporary resonance of classical comedy and political satire.
• Epichorios (with Professor Hans Beck and the team at the University of Münster): examining regional identities, localism and the interplay between local culture and wider Greek polities.
Primary investigator (PI)
Professional memberships
- Classical Association
- Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
- British Epigraphy Society
Student education
I teach ancient Greek history, archaeology and classical civilisation at undergraduate and postgraduate level. My teaching often asks how we can use texts, objects, landscapes and fragmentary evidence to reconstruct ancient lives and societies, and I frequently work with museums and collections as part of this approach.I welcome undergraduate, MA and PhD supervision enquiries across the ancient Mediterranean world. I am especially interested in projects on Greek history, archaeology, material culture, regional histories, warfare, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic world, the Peloponnesian War, slavery and subordination, and the social and cultural history of ancient communities, but I am always happy to discuss other topics with prospective students.
Current doctoral supervision:
Tong Wu- The Cult of Asclepius
This doctoral project examines the roles and development of the cult of Asclepius in the ancient Greek world, asking how healing, medicine, divine authority and local cult practice interacted. The project ambitiously reconsiders the spread and development of the cult from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period.
Arthur Holmes- Disruption and diversity: Understanding the impact of Alexander the Great through the material culture of the Hellenistic world
An AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the British Museum and the University of Leeds. It examines how the political and cultural changes associated with Alexander’s conquests can be traced through material culture, using objects such as coinage, figurines, vessels and other artefacts to explore regional diversity, local identities and everyday experience in the Hellenistic world.
Research groups and institutes
- Classics