Kim Bowes

My research has undergone a significant shift in both focus and practice in recent years. While I continue to work on the archaeology and material culture of the Roman and later Roman worlds, I have gradually moved from a focus on late antiquity and the archaeologies of religion and elite space, to an interest in historical economies with a particular focus on poverty and the lived experience of the poor. A recent two-volume study on Roman peasants in Italy reflects both an effort to reorient Roman archaeology and economic history towards a greater attention to non-elites, and my own methodological shift towards an integration of archaeological and scientific data, anthropological theory and historical economics. 

From 2009-2015 I codirected the Roman Peasant Project with colleagues from Penn and Italy and beyond. The Project was the first systematic study the lifeways and experiences of Roman peasants in Italy, and was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Loeb Foundation and the Penn Museum. The final two-volume publication, The Roman Peasant Project 2009-2015: Excavating the Roman Rural Poor, was published by the Penn Museum/ UPenn Press in 2021.

I've recently finished a book on poor economics for the Roman empire. Entitled Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent, the book proposes a new economic history of the Roman world, one centered on working people. Using both new ancient data and new work on the modern poor, the book workers-eye view of an ancient economy, one that speaks to the challenges of workers today, surviving in an unforgiving, global world.

I've developed my new research directions through teaching, including team-teaching with economists and historians. I'm currently teaching introductory courses on ancient economic history that addresses textual and archaeological sources; the later Roman empire; and graduate and undergraduate courses on Roman subalternity.

My work has been supported by the American Academy in Rome, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Loeb Foundation, the 1984 Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and now the Packard Humanities Institute.

From 2012-2014 I was the Mellon Professor of the American Academy in Rome, and from 2014-2017 I was the 22nd Director of the American Academy in Rome.