Ancient

Faculty

Emeritus Faculty

Continuing Lecturer

Introduction

UCLA grants graduate degrees in Ancient History through the Department of History. The Department aims to provide students with both broad and deep training in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world. Students are expected to acquire familiarity with all periods of ancient Mediterranean history, from Archaic Greece to the end of Late Antiquity, and to gain appropriate competencies in cognate disciplines (e.g., Classics, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Archaeology). Moreover, it is essential that students master the languages, analytical skills, research methods, and bodies of evidence that will enable them to contribute new knowledge to their chosen area of research. Finally, historians of the ancient Mediterranean world are expected to learn to understand and engage with the historiographic methods and concerns of the wider discipline of history.

The faculty members in the Ancient History field are David Phillips (Ph. D., Classical Studies, University of Michigan: Professor; Greek history, legal history) and Greg Woolf (Ph.D., Cambridge University:  Professor, Ancient World; Roman History).  There are two emeritus members of the faculty, S. Scott Bartchy (Ph.D., Harvard University: Early Christianity) and Ronald Mellor (Ph. D., Classics, Princeton University: Roman history). A Byzantine historian, John Langdon (Ph. D., Ancient History, UCLA), serves as a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of History.

Applications

Incoming graduate students are expected to have a strong background (demonstrated by multiple years of university-level study, with excellent grades) in ancient languages, especially Greek and Latin, but also, as applicable, other relevant ancient languages. Preference is given to students who have begun work on modern research languages other than English, especially German and French. In addition, students should have strong backgrounds in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world. For further information, please contact the field coordinator, Professor Greg Woolf, at gwoolf@history.ucla.edu.

Financial aid is available. Candidates for admission are offered recruitment fellowships for five years. In two of these years, the student will serve as a teaching assistant in a large undergraduate lecture course (commonly History 1, Introduction to Western Civilization). Opportunities exist as well to teach in the Classics Department as a TA (but those appointments are naturally made by that department). Research assistantships and readerships may also become available on a quarterly basis.  Students are encouraged to seek external funding during the program. More information is available on Graduate Division’s website.

We encourage study abroad at, for example, the American Academy in Rome and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Several of our students have received fellowships for the summer seminar of the American Numismatic Society in New York.

We provide a high degree of attention from our faculty, for normally there are about eight students in our program in various stages. We are pleased to correspond with potential students.

Program Requirements

For information regarding the degree requirements for the History Department, please click here.

For more information regarding the program requirements, please visit: https://grad.ucla.edu/programs/social-sciences/history/