Jake Ransohoff

Biography

Jake Ransohoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware. His research and teaching center on late antique and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on the Byzantine empire. His current book project studies physical impairment (and especially blindness) as a punishment for capital crimes in Byzantium and the medieval West. Other research interests include the material and environmental transformation of the post-Roman Mediterranean, the development of medieval Slavic societies, and the study of Byzantium by scholars in the early modern period. He has excavated at archaeological sites in Turkey, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Spain, and is co-editor of the volumes The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe (2021) and Byzantine History and the Antiquarian (2025), as well as the online “Justinianic Pandemic Sourcebook."

Prof. Ransohoff holds a BA in History and Medieval Studies from the University of Chicago (2012), and a PhD in History from Harvard University (2022). Before coming to Delaware, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University (2022–23) and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University (2023–24), and was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Bowdoin College (2024–25).