Christian Laes

As a classicist and ancient historian, I study the social and cultural history of Graeco-Roman and Late Antiquity, paying particular attention to the human life course: childhood, youth, family, sexuality, and disabilities. My monographs and circa 150 contributions have been published with internationally renowned publishers and journals.

During the last decade, I have been much involved in the study of disability history of Antiquity – an aspect of ‘dependency’ too often ignored in scholarship. Next to a monograph, three edited bookvolumes and several articles, this interest also led to the development of a website Disability History and the Ancient World containing a regularly updated bibliography on the subject.

I have contributed to the leading Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei with entries on Children, Family, and Women. I have also been commissioned a lemma for the foundational Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum.

I have previously worked on enslaved children in Antiquity. The topic of children at work in the fascinating period of Late Antiquity will be my main focus of research at the BCDSS. Next to this, I work on a translation and commentary of the Life of Aesop – a unique source of novel evidence, often neglected in scholarship on ancient slavery.

Since 2018
Full Professor (Ordinarius) of Ancient History, University of Manchester (UK).

2004    
PhD in Classics, Latin and Greek, Catholic University of Leuven (BE), maxima cum laude.

C. Laes, V. Vuolanto (eds.), A Cultural History of Youth in Antiquity (London, Bloomsbury, 2023).

Disabilities and the Disabled in the Roman World. A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018). 

C. Laes, J. Strubbe, Youth in the Roman Empire. The Young and the Restless Years? (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Children in the Roman Empire. Outsiders Within (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011).

[see here for a full and regularly updated list]