Emma Dench

Emma Dench, an English ancient historian, classicist, and academic administrator, was born in York, grew up near Stratford-Upon-Avon, and studied at Wadham College, Oxford (BA Hons Literae Humaniores 1987) and St. Hugh's College, Oxford (DPhil in Ancient History 1993). Before taking up a joint appointment in the Departments of the Classics and of History at Harvard in January 2007, she taught classics and ancient history at Birkbeck College, University of London (1992–2006). She has held various academic roles at institutions such as Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Birkbeck College, and Harvard University. Since 2014, Dench has been the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University and currently serves as the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences there. She is also a faculty member at Harvard University Department of History. She was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Dench is the author of "From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines" and "Romulus' Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian." She has published several works on ancient history and Roman culture. She is currently completing Imperialism and Culture in the Roman World for the Cambridge University Press series Key Themes in Ancient History. Other current projects include a study of the retrospective writing of the Roman Republican past in classical antiquity. Dench also made a brief appearance in the 1968 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

While at Harvard, Dench has been the recipient of a Harvard College Professorship for 2010–15 (recognizing "outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, mentoring and advising"), a Marquand Award for Excellent Advising and Counseling (2008), and an Everett Mendelsohn Award for Excellence in Mentoring Graduate Students (2015). In the academic year of 2015–16, she served as a Visiting Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, co-teaching a second-year elective MBA course, "All Roads Lead to Rome: Leadership Lessons from Antiquity," with Professor Frances Frei. She is a British citizen, a permanent resident of the United States, and the niece of the award-winning film actress Judi Dench.