Leah Lazar

My research explores the political and economic history of the ancient Greek world. I’m especially interested in empires and their complex interaction with smaller political communities. While I am first and foremost a historian, and make use of a broad range of sources, I also have specialist expertise in studying Greek inscriptions and coins. 

My first book, Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford University Press, 2024), provides an innovative analysis of the fifth-century BC Athenian empire, a central topic in ancient Greek history. Challenging orthodox approaches, which have been mostly been monolithic and focused on Athens, the book argues that Athenian power was flexible and a matter of negotiation between the Athenians and their subjects. It brings subject communities to centre stage as active agents, and considers how the Athenian empire operated in different regions. I’m currently working on two collaborative books on Athenian history – one on interdisciplinary approaches to the Athenian empire, and another on the late fifth-century anti-democratic revolutions at Athens.

I am also a researcher on the CHANGE project, funded by the European Research Council, a collaboration between Oxford, the British Museum and the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. The project researches the monetary and economic history of ancient Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), from the invention of coinage to the absorption of the region by the Roman empire, through the creation of big data-sets of numismatic and epigraphic evidence. For my part, I’m writing a second monograph on the impact of different imperial powers on the monetary economies of cities in Anatolia, and I'm co-editing a book of essays on monetary economies across the Hellenistic world.