Dr. Seth Bernard

Biography

Seth Bernard has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 2014. He holds a BA in Classics from Amherst College and a PhD in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Regular Member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. His research broadly focuses on social and economic history in Rome and Italy, particularly during the Republican period. He is a specialist in Roman archaeology and employs new scientific approaches drawn from various fields, such as archaeology and social sciences, to expand the historical understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world under Roman rule. His monographs include 'Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, Urban Economy, 400-200 BCE' (Oxford University Press, 2018) and 'Historical Culture in Iron Age Italy: Archaeology, History and the Use of the Past, 900-300 BCE' (Oxford University Press, 2023). He co-edited the volume 'Making the Middle Republic: New Approaches to Rome and Italy, 400-200 BCE', published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. In recent years, he has led projects on climate science and environmental history in pre-Imperial Italy and has ongoing research funded by the SSHRC Insight Grant, focusing on the economic development under Roman imperialism between c. 500 and 200 BCE. Seth has published over seventy articles and book chapters in various prestigious journals and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Roman Studies. He has participated in archaeological fieldwork across Greece, Morocco, and Italy and is involved in the Falerii Novi project, an excavation site north of Rome that explores urban life in the Roman and Post-Roman eras.

Research Interests

Experience