Glen Bowersock, D.Phil., an internationally respected historian on Greek, Roman and Near Eastern history and culture, will give the Biggs Lecture in the Classics for the Assembly Series. The talk, "Globalization in Late Antiquity," is scheduled at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium on the Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis.

Bowersock is professor emeritus of ancient history in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, N.J. He served as professor of ancient history at IAS from 1980 until his retirement in 2006. He came to IAS after a distinguished career at Harvard University (1962 to 1980), where he served as chairman of the classics department and associate dean of the faculty of arts and sciences.

His research interests include the Greek East in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity, as well as pre-Islamic Arabia.

He received a bachelor's from Harvard University in 1957. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees from Oxford University, he was awarded a doctorate from Oxford in 1962 as a Rhodes Scholar.

He has written or edited more than a dozen books and published nearly 300 articles. His books include "Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire" (1969), "Julian the Apostate" (1978), "Roman Arabia" (1983), "Fiction as History" (1994), and "Martyrdom and Rome" (2002). He co-edited "Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World," published in 1999 to wide critical acclaim.

He has received numerous awards recognizing his scholarship and contributions to his field. In 2004, he was named a Chevalier, or Knight, of the Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor), one of France's most prestigious awards and the country's highest civilian honor. In 1992, he received the James H. Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association for his book "Hellenism in Late Antiquity" (1990).

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institut de France and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As the Biggs Resident in the Classics, he will spend a week interacting with students and faculty. The Biggs Residency is a gift from John and Penelope Biggs, alumni of Washington University.

The event is free and open to the public. Steinberg Hall is the middle of three buildings located at the corner of Skinker and Forsyth on the Washington University Danforth Campus.