Panayiotis Christoforou joined New College in 2025 as a non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellow. He is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow at TU Dresden and holds a fellowship at the Pharos Foundation. Born in the US to a Cypriot father and Ecuadorean mother, he did his schooling in Kuwait and took his undergraduate degree in history in St Andrews. He came to Oxford in 2010 to study ancient history. where he received an MPhil in 2012 and DPhil in 2017. Before New College, he held various lectureships at different Oxford colleges, and was most recently a Departmental Lecturer at Oriel College.

Research Interests

Panayiotis is a Roman historian specialising in the history and historiography of the Roman empire in the first two centuries A.D with an expertise in the institution of the Roman Emperor and its reception. His research currently follows along four lines: 1) popular perceptions of the Roman emperorship, which has produced a book and several articles, and a new volume on the reception and perception of the emperor Trajan (with Dr Consuelo Martino); 2) A history of the concept of power (imperium) in Roman political thought 3) a study on the fragmentary works of the Roman historian Tacitus and its impact on Roman history 4) a new book project to analyse the perceived power of the Roman people in political life under the Roman Empire, which also involves new studies tribunes of the plebs in the early Roman Empire.

Selected Publications

Books:

• Imagining the Roman emperor: perceptions of rulers in the high empire (Cambridge University Press: 2023) 
  https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009362504
• Tacitus and the Incomplete (edited with B. ten Berge; forthcoming Michigan University Press, June 2026) https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.13084565

Articles: 

• ‘Tiberius the Capricious’ Greece and Rome 73 (2026) 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383525100521
• ‘Leaders, Landscapes, Power and Memory’ Classical Review 75 (2025) 383-393 (Published open access: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X25100711
• An Emperor’s Force: vis as a term for the absolute power of the Roman emperor’ Quaderni di Storia 98 (2023)
• Positions historiques: Un entretien avec Marcel Bénabou (an interview on the career and progression of Marcel Bénabou) – co-written with F. Santangelo, I Quaderni del Ramo di Oro 15 (2023)
• ‘Were Roman Emperors Charismatic Leaders? The Curious Case of the Caesars’ Politica Antica 13 (2023)
• ‘An Indication of Truly Imperial Manners: The Roman emperor in Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium’ Historia 70.1 (2021), 83–115.