Dr Thomas Clements

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Classics

  • UKRI/ERC Project 'Class Struggle in Ancient Greek Democracy'
  • School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Contact details

Address

Street

24 Buccleuch Place (Room 3.03)
University of Edinburgh

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LN

Biography

Background

I am a Greek historian studying Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greece and have since September 2025 been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the UKRI/ERC-funded project Class Struggle in Ancient Greek Democracy. I have previously held fellowships at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC and the University of Cincinnati. In 2022, I received a PhD in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Manchester. I also hold a BA (Hons) in History from Lancaster University (2016) and a MA in Classics and Ancient History (2017) from the University of Manchester. I was also Lecturer in Greek History at Manchester from 2022 to 2024, and remain an Honorary Research Fellow. 

Qualifications

2022 - PhD Classics and Ancient History (Manchester). 

2017 - MA Classics and Ancient History (Manchester). 

2016 - BA (Hons) in History (Lancaster). 

Research summary

Greek history (Archaic to Hellenistic), especially social and economic history; territory and territoriality; Greek epigraphy; Greek historiography. 

 

Current research interests

My primary research interests are in the history and archaeology of the Peloponnese, especially the Archaic to Hellenistic periods. I am currently preparing a monograph arising out of my doctoral research, Sparta's Territories: Power and Place in the Ancient Peloponnese, c. 800-371 BC, which examines the ways in which the Spartan polis territorialised itself in Lakonia and Messenia and (crucially) how ancient populations responded to these attempted impositions of authority. The book will represent a detailed study of territory and territorilisation in ancient Lakedaimon from a social, economic, cultural, and political perspective. My new research project (Class Relations, Urbanism and Rural Settlement in Peloponnesian Democracies, c.500-146 BC) examines the role and nature of class struggle and its relationship to settlement patterns in Peloponnesian democracies during the Classical and Hellenistic periods (c.500-146 BC). The project contends that the spatial reality of class relations, understood through the rural-urban paradigm, offers a crucial analytical context for understanding class relations; it also seeks to move beyond the more dominant paradigms of ethnicity and foreign policy in the study of the Peloponnese. The project will explore the changing nature of class relations, identity, and struggles in the mi-longue durée, covering several periods of conflict, political change, and economic development, thereby presenting a new analysis of class relations in politics, economics and society which cuts across conventional disciplinary boundaries. My other research interests range widely in Greek economic and social history, ancient state formation, Greek epigraphy, and Greek historiography (especially Herodotus and Thucydides). I have recently published a paper in Classical Quarterly outlining some essential nuances of Herodotus' presentation of Spartan helots and have several other articles and chapters in preparation.

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