Dr. Randolph Ford is an assistant professor of Ancient Studies and affiliate faculty member of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Randolph’s initial academic interests in Iceland and Scandinavia in the middle ages were accompanied by the study of Latin and Chinese and the ancient world more generally, and these seemingly disparate pursuits led him to study and work in both Norway and China for several years before beginning graduate work in Icelandic medieval literature. Yet in reading Old Icelandic texts, he was intrigued by the ways in which the memory of events that took place along the frontiers of the Roman Empire were preserved in the poetry and prose literature of medieval Iceland. These later accounts of wars between Goths and Huns and large movements of pastoral societies of Central Eurasia led his interests back to the Classical world while also spurring his interests in Central Asian history. Eventually, he was able to combine his study of Latin, Greek, and Classical Chinese texts at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient world, where he received his PhD in 2016.

Randolph is now writing his second book, a comparative historical study of the fate of the Roman and Chinese empires between the 4th and 6th centuries AD/CE. His first book—Rome, China, and the Barbarians—was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.