Respected Historian Professor Kate Cooper will be joining Royal Holloway, University of London as Head of History in September 2017. Kate joins us from the University of Manchester, where she has taught since 1995, most recently as Professor of Ancient History. Born in Washington, DC, she came to the UK after undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University, and post-graduate studies at Harvard and Princeton.

Her writing and teaching explore the world of the Mediterranean in the Roman period, with a special interest in daily life and the family, religion, gender and social identity, and the inter-connected problems of martyrdom, resistance movements, and religious violence. The New Statesman has called her Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women (Atlantic Books) ‘the best kind of popular history.’ Previous titles include The Virgin and the Bride (Harvard) and The Fall of the Roman Household (Cambridge).

She has won numerous awards and prizes, including the Rome Prize of the American Academy. Her most recent work, on the problem of religion and violence, has been supported by awards from the Leverhulme Trust (Major Research Fellowship 2012-15), for a project on The Early Christian Martyr Acts: A New Approach to Ancient Heroes of Resistance. The RCUK Partnership for Conflict, Crime, and Security Research supported Constantine's Dream: Belonging, Deviance and the Problem of Violence in Early Christianity, 2009-12.

Professor Katie Normington, Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, said, ‘I am delighted that Kate will be joining Royal Holloway. She brings a wealth of experience in research development and leadership skills having just served as Head of Classics and Ancient History at Manchester. I look forward to welcoming her here’.

Find out more about the Department of History.