About Josho Brouwers

My parents were dealers in East Asian art and antiques, so I was interested in material culture from a young age onwards. I eventually studied Archaeology & Prehistory at the VU Amsterdam, where I got my master’s degree in 2005. In 2007, I received some funding to support my PhD work. My PhD thesis dealt with warfare and society in ancient Greece, from the Late Bronze Age down to the end of the Persian Wars. I defended it in March of 2010. My thesis is available in Open Access.

I received funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to conduct two years’ worth of postdoctoral research into Archaic Greek fortifications at the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece (2009-2011). Upon my return to the Netherlands, I worked briefly as a webdeveloper (thanks to my skills in PHP and JavaScript), before being asked to become editor-in-chief of the popular bimonthly magazine Ancient Warfare, published by Karwansaray Publishers.

Karwansaray published an edition of my PhD thesis that is geared toward a more general audience, with the title Henchmen of Ares: Warriors and Warfare in Early Greece (2013). A year later, my second book was published with Athenaeum-Gennep & Van Polak in Amsterdam: a Dutch book on Greek mythology (2014). At Karwansaray, I also helped start the magazine Ancient History. I initially helped out a bit on the side with Ancient History before becoming its editor in late 2016.

In 2017, I left and started the website Ancient World Magazine with a couple of friends. The website no longer exists as of 2022, but much of its contents – my own articles as well as many by other contributors – is now archived here. In 2017, I also went to work for Primavera Pers, a publishing house in Leiden, to focus on the production of books, including books for high school students, as well as books on cultural history, art, and classics. In 2020, I built the website Bad Ancient, which fact-checks claims about the ancient world (run by Dr Owen Rees who coined the #badancient hash tag on Twitter).

Since 2006, I have also worked as a freelance lecturer. I have taught at a number of different institutions in the Netherlands that focus on continuing education. Courses that I have taught include an introduction to archaeology, a course on Homer and his world, a very popular course on Greek mythology, a short course on the Trojan War, an extended course on ancient Greek and Roman art and architecture, and a survey of Bronze Age Crete. I have also been invited to speak in museums, for example as accompaniment to new exhibitions, especially at the National Archaeological Museum in Leiden and the Allard Pierson in Amsterdam.

In autumn 2021, my wife and I emigrated to Austria, where we now live in the beautiful city of Vienna. I currently focus on conducting research and spend most of my time reading and writing. I aso continue to work as a freelance editor.

Research interests

My primary research interests can be summarized as follows:

• War, violence, and society in the pre-Classical Aegean
• Pre-Classical Aegean art and iconography
• Homer and the Trojan War

My secondary research interests include:

• Archaeology of the pre-Classical Aegean (general)
• Greek mythology and religion
• Pre-Classical Greek texts
• Reception of the ancient world
• Archaeological theory

“Pre-Classical” is used as a shorthand to refer to the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, and Archaic period, so the period before ca. 500 BC.

Publications

The following list only contains publications that have appeared in print, not online. An overview of all the online stuff that has been published on this website, including many reviews, is available here.