Ian Morris, Geography as destiny: from ancient history to big history

Description: In the 19th century, classicists regularly claimed to be contributing to understanding humanity's long-term history, but in the 20th, they steadily retreated from such assertions. In this talk, I describe my own view of how studying antiquity still helps us explain the larger story, albeit in a very different way from older ideas. I focus on the arguments in my most recent book, looking at the 10,000-year history of the British Isles.

Short Bio: Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics at Stanford. He has excavated in Britain, Greece, and Sicily, and has published 15 books, which have been translated into 18 languages. As well as working at Stanford, he is a Senior Fellow of the IDEAS Institute at the LSE and has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, delivered the Tanner Lectures in Human Values at Princeton University, briefed the World Bank and US National Intelligence Council, served as the Australian Army’s Keogh Professor of Future Land Warfare, taught MBA students in the University of Zurich’s business school, and been a member of the Max Planck Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board. He is currently writing a new book, tentatively titled What Happened in History, to be published by Princeton.

Lunch will be provided at event. This event will not be available via zoom and will not be recorded.