Professor of History
Participating Faculty, Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology
Carlos Noreña (PhD, Ancient History, University of Pennsylvania, 2001) is Goldman Distinguished Chair of Social Sciences, Professor of History, and (from Fall 2025) Director of the Ancient Worlds Center at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Imperial Ideals in the Roman West (Cambridge 2011); editor of The Roman Atlantic: Dynamics of an Ocean Frontier (Oxford, forthcoming) and A Cultural History of Western Empires: Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2018); and co-editor of From Document to History: Epigraphic Insights into the Graeco-Roman World (Brill 2019) and The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual (Cambridge 2010). He has published widely in Roman history, literary and material cultures in the Roman empire, the topography of Rome, historical geography, and comparative empires.
Current projects include a monograph on legislation, imperialism, and republicanism in ancient Rome (under contract with Princeton University Press); contributions to a new edition of Roman Statutes; an edited volume on urbanism and settlement in Roman Iberia; and a series of scholarly and public-facing essays on "global antiquity" and comparative ancient empires. He is also series co-editor for Antiquity in Global Context (Cambridge University Press).
Noreña has been a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and has delivered several keynote and named lectures, including the J. H. Gray Lectures at the University of Cambridge (2022) and the Hyde Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania (2025). In 2017, he received UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
Education
PhD, Ancient History, University of Pennsylvania, 2001
BA, History, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
Books
* = in progress
* An Empire of Laws: Legislation and Imperialism in the Roman Republic (under contract with Princeton University Press).
Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Edited Volumes
* = in progress
* The Roman Atlantic: Dynamics of an Oceanic Frontier (under contract with Oxford University Press).
From Document to History: Epigraphic Insights into the Greco-Roman World. Second North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (2016). Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy, co-ed. N. Papazarkadas (Brill, 2019).
A Cultural History of Empires: Antiquity (Bloomsbury Academic, UK, 2018).
The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual. Yale Classical Studies vol. 35, co-ed. B. Ewald (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Articles & Book Chapters
* = in progress
* “Constituting Imperial Government, 27 BC–AD 98,” in D. Potter (ed.), Constructing the Imperial System, vol. 5 of The Oxford History of the Roman World (Oxford University Press, 2026).
"The Atlantic Façade," forthcoming in F. Pina Polo (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ancient Iberia (2026).
"The Problem(s) of Empire," Journal of Roman Studies 114 (2024), 125-43.
"Antioch as Provincial Capital," in A. Di Giorgi (ed.), Antioch on the Orontes: History, Society, and Visual Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2024), 109-118.
“Coinage in the Early and High Roman Empire: Pax, Victory, and Monarchic Ideology,” in Ch. Chrysafis, A. Hartmann, Chr. Schliephake, and G. Weber (eds.), Basileus Eirenophylax: Friedenskultur(en) und monarchische Repräsentation in der Antike (Stuttgart, 2023), 303-17.
"From Wigwams to Worlds: On the Work of Keith Hopkins," Journal of Roman Archaeology 35 (2022) 524-39.
"Imperial Integration on Rome's Atlantic Rim," in H. Flower and A.M. Luijendijk (eds.), Empire and Religion in the Roman World: Essays in Honour of Brent Shaw (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 35-70.
"Monarchy, Benefaction, and Honorific in the Roman Imperial Greek polis," in M. Domingo-Gygax and A. Zuiderhoek (eds.), Benefactors and the Polis: Origins and Development of the Public Gift in the Greek Cities from the Homeric World to Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 201-21.
"Private Associations and Urban Experience in the Han and Roman Empires," in H. Beck and G. Vankeerberghen (eds.), Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 102-30.
"Romanization in the Middle of Nowhere: The Case of Segobriga," Fragments 8 (2019), 1-32.
"Die Stadt Rom als System sozialer Kontrolle," in P. Eich and K. Wojchiech (eds.), Die Verwaltung der Stadt Rom in der Hohen Kaiserzeit. Formen der Kommunikation, Interaktion und Vernetzung (Paderborn, 2018), 225-51.
"Introduction," in C. Noreña (ed.), A Cultural History of Western Empires: Antiquity (Bloomsbury Academic, UK, 2018), 1-37.
"Imperial Representation and Distributional Politics under Severus Alexander," in N. Elkins and J. DeRose Evans (eds.), Concordia Disciplinarum: Essays on Ancient Coinage, History, and Archaeology in Honor of William E. Metcalf (American Numismatic Society, 2018), 209-22.
"Nero's Imperial Administration," in S. Bartsch et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 48-62.
"Heritage and Homogeneity: The Civic Coinage of Roman Antioch," in S. Alcock, M. Egri, and J. Frakes (eds.), Beyond Boundaries: Connecting Visual Cultures in the Provinces of Ancient Rome (Getty Publications, 2016), 294-306.
"Ritual and Memory: Hellenistic Ruler Cults in the Roman Empire," in K. Galinsky (ed.), Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire (Getty Publications, 2016), 86-100.
"Urban Systems in the Han and Roman Empires: State Power and Social Control," in W. Scheidel (ed.), State Power in the Han and Roman Empires (Oxford University Press, 2015), 181-203.
"Chang'an and Rome: Structural Parallels and the Logics of Urban Form," in M. Nylan and G. Vankeerberghen (eds.), Chang'an 26 BCE: From Drains to Dreams (University of Washington Press, 2015), 75-97.
"Authority and Subjectivity in the Apology," in B. Lee et al. (eds.), Apuleius and Africa (Routledge, 2014), 35-51.
"Locating the Ustrinum of Augustus," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 58 (2013), 51-64.
"The Sociospatial Embeddedness of Roman Law," Journal of Roman Archaeology 26 (2013), 565-74.
"Self-fashioning in the Panegyricus," in P. Roche (ed.), Pliny's Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 29-44.
"Coins and Communication," in M. Peachin (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World (Oxford University Press, 2011), 248-68.
"Introduction," with B. Ewald, in B. Ewald and C. Noreña (eds.), The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual. Yale Classical Studies vol. 35 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1-43.
"The Early Imperial Monarchy," in A. Barchiesi and W. Scheidel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010), 533-46.
"The Ethics of Autocracy in the Roman World," in R. Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Blackwell, 2009), 266-79.
"Hadrian's Chastity," Phoenix 61.3-4 (2007), 296-317.
"The Social Economy of Pliny's Correspondence with Trajan," American Journal of Philology 128.2 (2007), 239-77.
"Water Distribution and the Residential Topography of Augustan Rome," in L. Haselberger and J. Humphrey (eds.), Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation-Visualization-Imagination, Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 61 (Portsmouth, RI, 2006), 91-105.
"Medium and Message in Vespasian's Templum Pacis," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 48 (2003), 25-43.
"The Communication of the Emperor's Virtues," Journal of Roman Studies 91 (2001), 146-68.
Reviews
E. Heldaas Seland, A Global History of the Ancient World: Asia, Europe and Africa before Islam (Routledge 2022), Classical Review 73 (2023), 548-9.
H. Zehnacker and N. Méthy, Pline le jeune, Lettres Tome IV: Livre X (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017), Gnomon 95 (2023), 224-46.
H. Fertik, The Ruler's House: Contesting Power and Privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Gnomon 94 (2022), 475-77.
S. Benoist, Le pouvoir à Rome: espace, temps, figures (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2020), sehepunkte 21 (2021), nr. 6.
M. Duggan, M. Jackson, and S. Turner (eds.), Ceramics and Atlantic Connections: Late Roman and Early Medieval Imported Pottery on the Atlantic Seaboard (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2021.06.10.
C. Davenport, A History of the Roman Equestrian Order (Cambridge University Press, 2019), American Historical Review 125 (2020), 1484-5.
E. Dench, Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2019.07.48.
C. Ando, Roman Social Imaginaries: Language and Thought in the Context of Empire (University of Toronto Press, 2016), Phoenix 70 (2017), 421-23.
J. Albers, Campus Martius. Die urbane Entwicklung des Marsfeldes von der Republik bis zur mittleren Kaiserzeit (Weisbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2013), and P. Jacobs and D. Conlin, Campus Martius: The Field of Mars in the Life of Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Journal of Roman Studies 106 (2016), 285-87.
E. Mayer, The Ancient Middle Classes: Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012) American Historical Review 118 (2013), 1576-77.
S. Benoist (ed.), Rome, a City and its Empire in Perspective: The Impact of the Roman World through Fergus Millar's Research (Leiden: Brill, 2012), sehepunkte 13 (2013), nr. 9.
L. de Arrizabalaga y Prado, The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction? (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Classical Review 62.1 (2012), 275-77.
Z. Várhelhyi, The Religion of Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and the Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2011.04.40.
P. Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), Journal of Roman Studies 98 (2008), 257-58.
C. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors (Harvard University Press, 2006), Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 8:2 (2007).
G. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (University of Michigan Press, 2005), Classical Review 57.1 (2007), 178-79.
O. Hekster and R. Fowler (eds.), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome. Oriens et Occidens 11 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.07.06.
G. Woolf (ed.), Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Classical Review 55 (2005), 614-15.
J. B. Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Classical Bulletin 81 (2005), 85-86.
A. S. Hobley, An Examination of Roman Bronze Coin Distribution in the Western Empire A.D. 81-192. BAR International Series 688 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1998), American Journal of Numismatics 11 (1999), 160-64.
P. Southern, Augustus (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1999.05.16.
Public Writing
“The Glass Half Empty,” review of J. Rapley and P. Heather, Why Empires Fall (Allen Lane, 2023), Times Literary Supplement, July 28, 2023.
“Guide to a Foreign Past: The Scorched-Earth Iconoclasm of Paul Veyne,” Aeon, April 18, 2023.
