معرفی
Knut Ødegård is Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Oslo, a position he has held since 2024. Previously, he served as Associate Professor of Ancient History at UiO from 1998 to 2025. He is affiliated with the History Department and has served as Director of the Norwegian Institute in Athens and cultural attaché at the Norwegian Embassy in Athens from 2003 to 2007.
His academic background includes a Master of Arts in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oslo (1988) and a Dr. Philos. degree (1998) with the thesis "Bastion of Empire. The Topography and Archaeology of Cales in the Republican Period." Prior to his professorship, he was Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome (1990-94) and Amanuensis in Ancient History at UiO (1994-98).
Professor Ødegård specializes in Greek and Roman history and archaeology, with particular expertise in antique urbanism, Mediterranean settlement patterns, religion and society in antiquity, and Late Roman/early Byzantine history in the eastern Mediterranean. His research centers on Greek city development, especially Tegea in Arcadia.
He has directed major archaeological projects including The Norwegian Arcadia Survey (1998-2002), Geophysical survey of ancient Tegea (2003-2006), The Hellenic-Norwegian Excavations at Tegea (2009-2013), The Norwegian Naxos Survey (2010-13), and The Apalirou Environs Project (2013-present), focusing on Byzantine Naxos.
His scholarly output shows consistent engagement with ancient Greek urban development, particularly Tegea, alongside broader themes of political organization and cultural transformation from the Archaic period through Late Antiquity, with recent work emphasizing Byzantine urbanism in the Cyclades.
Professor Ødegård is also active in public dissemination, having delivered popular science lectures in Oslo in 2013 on ancient societies under Fritt Ord (available on YouTube), which formed the basis for his book "Antikken. Hellas og Roma fra bystat til imperium" (2014).
- HIS1100 Ancient World History
- HIS1200 Early world history up to about 1800
- HIS2111 The Light from the Acropolis. The Greek polis between ideal and reality
- HIS2112 The Roman Empire; Cause, course, effect
- HIS2114 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- HIS2116 Rome Caput Mundi. From imperial capital to the center of Christendom
- HIS2100 Rome: City and Empire in Antiquity (teaching in Rome)
- HIS4120 The Long Late Antiquity
- HIS4215 Rome Caput Mundi. Historical perspectives on topography, religion and power
