Dr. Rolf Strootman is Associate Professor and Head of Ancient History. He is a leading specialist on Alexander the Great and the so-called Hellenistic kingdoms, in particular the Seleucid Empire. He is a former Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute and previously worked at the University of California in Los Angeles and Leiden University.
I teach World History and Ancient History at Utrecht University. In my research and public outreach, I aim to broaden the conventional focus of Ancient History on the (Greco-Roman) Mediterranean by drawing attention to cultural and political developments in East Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and India.
As a researcher, I study the connection between imperialism and globalization, focusing on Afro-Eurasian empires in the second half of the first millennium BCE. Subjects that I focus on include religion, court culture, and warfare. My research interests further include east-west interactions and the image of the "Orient" in Western culture; the cultural history of warfare; the history of Istanbul; and the reception of the Ancient World in modern popular culture (especially cinema and fantasy fiction).
I am the author of Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires, c. 330-30 BCE (2014), The Birdcage of the Muses: Patronage of the Arts and Sciences at the Ptolemaic Imperial Court, 305-222 BCE (2016), as well as a number of edited volumes, including Persianism in Antiquity (2016; co-edited with M. J. Versluys) and Empires of the Sea: Maritime Power Networks in World History (2019; with F. van den Eijnde and R. van Wijk). I am currently writing a book on the relationship between war and identity in European history from the Battle of Marathon to the war in Ukraine.
Keywords: Global Antiquity; Orientalism; imperialism and colonialism; Classical Greece; Ancient Persia; Alexander the Great and Macedonia; Hellenism; Anatolia, the Near East, Iran and Central Asia; military history; Cleopatra.
Research Interests
World History and premodern Globalization
Cultural interactions in the Ancient World / the Silk Roads
Afro-Eurasian empires in comparative perspective
Court culture and the rituals of royalty
Alexander the Great and the Seleucid Empire
War and Imperialism in Republican Rome
The western image of the "Orient"
The history and topography of Istanbul
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