Professor Simon Swain

FBA

Classics

Two Year Fellow since 2024

I am a Hellenist with research interests in the Greek literature and culture of the Roman period and the general historical background to this, especially in the eastern Roman empire. In recent years I have focussed on late antiquity. I have a particular interest in the development of Greek ideas in medicine, politics, economics, ethics in the Arabic culture of the Islamicate Middle Ages. I have extensive leadership experience up to pro-vice-chancellor and vice-president level at Warwick and at the British Academy. I currently chair the Academy’s UK-wide Early Career Researcher Network, which I founded in 2020. I have extensive grant income and currently lead the Wellcome Trust project “Liquid Knowledge” (2026-2031) on the rise of uroscopy as a dominant form of diagnosis and prognosis from Late Antiquity to the Islamicate and Byzantine Middle Ages.

Links

Email: s.c.r.swain@warwick.ac.uk

Research Areas

Greco-Roman History, Culture, Literature

Reception of Greek Thought in Medieval Islamicate Culture and Science

Selected Publications

Wisdom from the Ancients (with E Savage-Smith) (2023)

Themistius and Valens. Orations 6-13 (2021)

Pseudo-Galenica. The Formation of the Galenic Corpus From Antiquity to the Renaissance (with C. Petit and K-D. Fischer) (2021)

Ibn Abī Usaybiʿah. Anecdotes and Antidotes, A Medieval Arabic History of Physicians (with E. Savage-Smith and G. van Gelder, H. Cockrell) (2020)

A Literary History of Medicine. The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-atibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (with E. Savage-Smith and G. van Gelder) (2020) Galeni In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum II commentariorum I-VI versio Arabica (with U. Vagelpohl) (2016)

Economy, Family, and Society from Rome to Islam. A Critical Edition, English Translation, and Study of Bryson’s “Management of the Estate” (2013)