Dr Emma Nicholson

I am a Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, and currently Director of Postgraduate Research in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology. My research focuses on Hellenistic history and historiography, the ancient historian Polybius of Megalopolis, Philip V of Macedon, the Antigonid kings of ancient Macedonia, the coming of Rome into the Greek East, and ancient leadership.

I am the director of the international research community - The Antigonid Network - which promotes the study of the Antigonid kings of ancient Macedonia and their influence on the Mediterranean, past and present. I also direct Exeter's Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies, which supports and promotes research on the Greek world in its Afro-Eurasian context from the death of Alexander the Great to Late Antiquity.

My recent book Philip V of Macedon in Polybius' Histories: Politics, History, and Fiction was published with Oxford University Press in February 2023. It challenges Polybius' portrait of Philip V and conventional scholarly ideas about the king and historian. I am also a co-editor of the forthcoming volume (summer 2025), Stranger-Kingship in Antiquity, Routledge. This volume results from a conference held at Exeter University in 2022, and introduces the notion of “stranger-kingship” to the field of ancient history, evaluating its use as a new way of thinking about kingship as a political, social, and cultural phenomenon.

My current projects include:

• A book on Polybius for the New Surveys in the Classics series (under contract with Cambridge University Press)
• A book on the Antigonid dynasty co-written with Dr Annelies Cazemier (Southampton) (under contract with Routledge)
• An edited volume titled Literary Genre and Leadership Values in Antiquity (under contract with Bloomsbury)

Biography:

As a child, I grew up in Taiwan and Berkshire (UK). I studied for my BA in Ancient History at Royal Holloway, University of London and completed my MA via the London intercollegiate programme. After an interim in industry and teaching in China, I started my PhD at Newcastle University in 2012, fully funded by an AHRC Doctoral Fellowship and specialising in Polybius and Philip V of Macedon. In 2015, I also received funding from the AHRC and the DAAD to visit Friedrich-Alexander Universitaet in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Freiburg University, and the University of Bologna. After completing my PhD, I taught at Newcastle (2015-2016) and Edinburgh (2016-2017), before coming to the University of Exeter in September 2017. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022.