The Britainization of Justin

The title of this post is borrowed from the blog of Mark Goodacre’s wife Emily; it was started when Mark acquired his NT position at Duke, having left the University of Birmingham.  My situation only resembles theirs:  I, being a Classical Studies graduate student at Columbia University in NY, have begun a long-term project based at Oxford University.  But mine is only a research affiliation that is likely to last the next several years; it’s not a “job.”  In any event, as such I’m here staying at Braesenose College (or, it’s annex actually, Frewin Court) for this month of July. 

In any event, I’ve decided to chronicle my time here via this ill-updated blog.  I intend to drop a few lines from time to time on my reactions to this new environment, as well as my research.  Incidentally, I count this as my first real “trip” to Europe.  I’ve visited the airports of Milan and Madrid, and even spent several days on the European side of Istanbul, but (obviously) they don’t exactly count. 

As a first note, I suppose, a little about my research:  The Oxford Roman Economy Project (or OXREP as we call it) intends to do a semi-comprehensive analysis of the Roman economy of the whole Roman empire in the span of six years, with a different topic each year.  This year is year two and the topic is agriculture; last year it was demography.  As for me, my own work, generally speaking, has started with the desire to mathematically quantify and model agricultural trade within Egypt.  I’ve been researching a new branch of modern economics called New Economic Geography, hoping that it might offer some insight on related questions.  We’ll see what we learn.