Omri Matarasso

Omri Matarasso is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. He studies the social and cultural history of the Silk Roads throughout Late Antiquity, the period stretching roughly from the Christianization of the Roman Empire to the early Islamic period. In his time as a fellow at the CDH, Omri plans to explore the extant evidence of different late antique libraries and the books held therein. By using DH tools to map, organize, and visualize this evidence, he hopes to shed light on late antique reading habits and the various courses of transmission and reception of books throughout the regions of the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Central and East Asia. Omri’s research thus aims to bring into focus the interconnectedness of world history in an intellectually dynamic period that has been traditionally, and inaccurately, seen as a “Dark Age” in human history.