Karl Berg

Biography

Karl Berg is Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Center for Humanities. His research focuses on the political, cultural, religious, and institutional history of the Roman world between the first century BC and the fifth century AD. His principal research project, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship held at the University of Oxford (2022–2025), examined the institutional history of ruler worship (“the imperial cult”) in the Western Roman empire from the Severan period (AD 193–235) down to the Vandal conquest of Roman Africa. He has also written articles on early Christianity, religious conflict in the Roman world, and the cultural transformation of the fourth and fifth centuries AD.

Berg earned his D.Phil. in Ancient History from the University of Oxford (2026); M.A. in Early Christian Studies (2022); M.A. in Archaeology from Durham University (2021) and his B.A. in History and German from Hillsdale College (2018).

Current Projects

Berg’s current book project is a monograph on the history of ruler cult in the western Roman Empire from the collapse of the Antonine dynasty down to the Vandal Conquest of Roman Africa in the 430s. This book aims at answering the question of how the phenomena whereby Roman Emperors were paid divine honours came to be transformed over two pivotal epochs of Roman history: the turbulent long-third century and ensuing period of the Roman Empire’s Christianization.

Publications

“Julius Festus Hymetius and the Studium Sacerdotii Provinciae Africae (CIL VI, 1736),” Studies in Late Antiquity (forthcoming).

“Imitatio Christi, Imitatio Divorum: the Appropriation of Roman Imperial Funerary Imagery in the Martyrdom of Polycarp and Prudentius’ Peristephanon 3,” Studia Patristica (forthcoming).

“Fresh Epigraphic Light on the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Date of its Protagonist’s Death,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 34.2 (2026): 151–78.

“Early Christians and the Charge of Atheism: A Note on the ἄθεοι ἄθυτοι of Porphyry’s De Abstinentia 2.7.3,” Vigiliae Christianae: A Review of Early Christian Life and Languages 80.3 (2026): 271–83.

“Augustine of Hippo and Late Roman Slavery: a Reassessment,” Augustiniana 75.1 (2025): 67–109.

“A Curious Problem in the Renovation of the Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Reconstructing the Use of Water in the Durene Baptismal Rite and its Ritual Significance,” Journal of Late Antiquity 16.2 (2023): 259–88.