Rate My Professor Ulrich Gotter

Ulrich Gotter is Professor of Ancient History in the Department of History at the University of Konstanz, a position he has held since October 2004. Born in Berlin in 1964, he studied law, history, political science, and classical archaeology at the Free University of Berlin and Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg from 1982 to 1988. He earned his doctorate in 1992 from the University of Freiburg and completed his habilitation there in 2002 with the thesis 'Griechenland in Rom? Die römische Rede über Hellas und ihre Kontexte (3.-1. Jhdt. v. Chr.)'. Before joining Konstanz, Gotter served as a research assistant at the Seminar for Ancient History in Freiburg from 1992 to 1998, contributed to Freiburg's Collaborative Research Centers on transitions between orality and literacy (1994-1996) and identities and alterities (1997-2000), and worked as a research associate in the SFB 493 at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster on 'Functions of Religion in Ancient Societies of the Near East,' focusing on temples and temple destructions (2001-2003). In 2004, he was a research associate in a DFG-funded project at Münster on 'Struggle for Sacred Sites: Sacred Place and Religious Conflict in Late Antiquity.' In 2009, he declined a professorial offer from the University of Freiburg.

Gotter's research focuses on the Roman Republic, the Hellenization of the Roman aristocracy, Roman historiography, acculturation processes in the eastern Mediterranean, ancient autocracy, regional studies of Rough Cilicia, Christianization of Asia Minor and Syria, and religious conflict. He has co-edited key volumes including 'From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity' (2008), 'Augustus and the Destruction of History' (2020, with Ingo Gildenhard, Wolfgang Havener, and Louise Hodgson), and 'A Culture of Civil War? Bellum Civile and Political Communication in Late Republican Rome' (2023, with Henning Börm and Wolfgang Havener). His publications also feature the monograph 'Der Diktator ist tot! Politik in Rom zwischen den Iden des März und der Begründung des Zweiten Triumvirats' (1996), derived from his dissertation, as well as articles such as 'The Past as a Battlefield of the Present: Cato's (Counter)Revolutionary Construction of the Republican Memory Space' (2003) and 'The Nemesis of the Generally Valid: Max Weber's Charisma Concept and Ancient Monarchies' (2008).