Assoc ProfessorPhilip De Souza

My main research areas are warfare, seafaring and society in Classical Antiquity and Global History. I have published a book on Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge 1999; Polish translation 2008; Chinese translation 2023), plus many articles and chapters on aspects of ancient piracy. I contributed articles on "Menschenraub" and "Piraterie" to the online Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei , ed. H. Heinen (Stuttgart 2017). My book Seafaring and Civilization: Maritime Perspectives on World History was published by Profile Books in 2001, with German editions in 2003 & 2006 and a Chinese (Mandarin) edition in 2016.  I have presented papers on this research at seminars and conferences in Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Spain and the USA. I have published articles and chapters on various aspects of Greek and Roman warfare. Recently, I wrote a chapter on Courage and Cowardice in Ancient Naval Warfare, for Brill's Companion to Courage and Cowardice in the Ancient World, edited by Jenn Finn (Brill 2025), a chapter on Human Resource Management for ManagingWarships and Fleets in the Ancient Greek World, edited by Fernando Echeverría and Chiara Mauro (Brill 2026) and a chapter on Greek Warfare and Fortification in the new edition of the Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World , edited by John P. Oleson and Milo Nikolic (Oxford 2026). I wrote chapters on Hellenistic and Roman Republican navies, naval warfare and sieges in the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare , edited by P. Sabin, H. van Wees & M. Whitby (Cambridge 2007), and a chapter on war at sea for the Oxford Handbook of Classical Warfare, edited by Brian Campbell and Lawrence Tritle (New York and Oxford 2013). I am editing The Oxford Handbook of Seafaring in the Classical World, to be published by Oxford University Press. This multi-authored volume will present the latest research on the subject. I was recently one of five period editors for an international research project called Océanides, based at the École Militaire Paris The project produced four volumes entitled The Sea in History/La mer dans l'histoire (Boydell Press 2017), which assess the influence of the sea on human history. The general editor is Professor Christian Buchet and the other period editors were Professor Pascal Arnaud, Professor Michel Balard, Professor Gérard Le Bouédec and Professor Nicholas Rodger.  I have published a books on The Peloponnesian War (Oxford, 2002; Spanish translation 2011) and The Greek and Persian Wars (Oxford, 2003). These two works draw on textual and visual evidence to combine overviews of the political and military history with case studies of the social history of Greek warfare. I have published many other articles and chapters on Greek and Roman warfare. With Professor John France of Swansea University I edited a volume of papers on the subject of War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History , Cambridge University Press, 2008. I have also edited an illustrated volume of essays by leading historians and archaeologists on The Ancient World at War, Thames & Hudson, 2008, which has been translated into German, Italian and Spanish. I am a member of the UCD Centre for War Studies and the UCD Humanities Institute. I am currently completing an Anthology of Ancient Warfare (with my UCD colleague Dr Martin Brady). The next phase of my research and publication on ancient warfare will be a monograph on Ancient Naval Warfare. I was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences for the academic year 2008-09 to work on this project. It will be the first major work on the subject since 1937.  I am also working in the longer term on a monograph on Warfare in the Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History. This innovative book will utilize a wide range of textual and material evidence to explore its subject through a number of case studies, ranging in time from Archaic Greece to Late Antiquity.