Simon Corcoran

Dr Simon Corcoran is Senior Lecturer in Roman History in the School of History, Classics & Archaeology at Newcastle University, where he has taught since 2016. He is simultaneously Co-Director of the long-standing Projet Volterra at University College London and, for the academic year 2023/24, a Fellow of the ERC-funded AntCoCo project based at the University of Bamberg.

Education

• B.A. in Literae Humaniores, Christ Church, Oxford (1984)
• D.Phil. in Ancient History, St John’s College, Oxford (1992)
• M.Ar.Ad. in Archive Administration, University of Liverpool (1994)

Research Interests

Corcoran’s scholarship centres on the history and transmission of Roman law from the third to the seventh centuries and beyond. His work integrates legal, papyrological, epigraphic and manuscript evidence to trace how imperial constitutions were preserved, re-used and transformed across antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Particular focal points include the Tetrarchic and Constantinian periods, Greek and Latin epigraphy, Justinian’s codification programme, and the bilingual character of eastern imperial law. A recent strand investigates the reception of Roman legal manuscripts in the work of the twelfth-century English historian William of Malmesbury.

Scientific Awards & Distinctions

• Henryk Kupiszewski Prize, Centro romanistico internazionale Copanello (1998) – silver medal for his monograph The Empire of the Tetrarchs
• Honorary Senior Research Associate, Department of History, University College London (2016–present)
• Co-Director, Projet Volterra, British Academy Project (2018–present)

Research Leadership & Grants

Since 1999 Corcoran has been a core member of Projet Volterra, directing the creation of comprehensive digital corpora of Roman imperial legislation. He assumed the co-Directorship in 2018, leading teams in the UK and abroad in reconstructing the Codex Gregorianus and Hermogenianus and tracking the palingenesis of constitutions across textual traditions. His year-long fellowship with the ERC Consolidator Grant AntCoCo (2023/24) enables concentrated research on legal continuity and change in the Constantinian era.

Laboratories & Teams

Corcoran collaborates closely with the Projet Volterra research collective, which unites classicists, legal historians and digital humanists at University College London and partner institutions to analyse Roman legal texts using TEI-compliant encoding and advanced database technologies.