Daniëlle Slootjes holds the Chair of Ancient History. Sinds February 2025 she is Head of the Department of History, European Studies, Religious Studies and Hermetic Philosophy and Latin American Studies at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). 

Originally trained in Classics at the University of Groningen, she moved to the United States where she obtained an MA and a PhD in Ancient History at the University of Chapel Hill in North Carolina (UNC). She has published extensively on late antique Roman administration (in particular on provinces and dioceses), ancient geography, the history of early Christianity and crowd behavior throughout antiquity (with a particular focus on Rome and Constantinople).

Slootjes’ research is characterised by a multidisciplinary vision that is consciously discarding traditional boundaries between disciplines. Her work on the Roman Empire’s administrative structures and geography has demonstrated how closely intertwined the late Roman and early medieval periods were. Her most recent research, into the universal phenomenon of collective behaviour in Greek, Roman and Byzantine cities, is ideally suited to a multidisciplinary approach. Slootjes is constantly on the lookout for connections between the traditional disciplines (philology, ancient history and archaeology) and the more modern concepts and methods from, for example, sociology, social psychology and social geography. In 2023 she started a close cooperation with the UvA 4DResearch lab (Home < 4D Research Lab) in order to develop VR simulations of ancient crowds, both for teaching and research purposes. 

Intertwining of the Mediterranean area in antiquity
As a professor at the UvA, Slootjes focuses in particular on the connections between various chronological periods and geographical areas of the ancient Mediterranean area. Antiquity is often presented in a diachronic fashion with the help of the classical chronological categorisations of the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Slootjes argues for a more integrated and synchronous approach, emphasising the interweaving of the classical world with the Ancient Near East, Egypt and the later Byzantine Empire. This integrated approach also allows for the history of the ancient Mediterranean area to be placed in a broader trans-regional perspective and related to the history of the Middle and Far East.

Slootjes' research is embedded in the Amsterdam School for Historical Studies (ASH, https://ash.uva.nl) and the Amsterdam Centre for Urban History (AHUC, https://acuh.uva.nl), and the Amsterdam Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (ACASA, https://acasa.uva.nl).