Shushma Malik

Shushma Malik is a Roman historian who specializes in Roman imperial history and classical reception studies. She is currently Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Onassis Classics Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has also worked at universities in London, Brisbane (Australia), and Manchester. Her BA (Hons), MA, and PhD were awarded by the University of Bristol.

She has published in academic journals and edited volumes on subjects ranging from the Roman historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio, to the letters and novel of Oscar Wilde, to the philosophical-history of Montesquieu. Her first book, The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. In 2024, her edited volume (co-edited with Dr Caillan Davenport, ANU), Representing Rome’s Emperors: Cultural and Historical Perspectives through Time, will be published by Oxford University Press.

Shushma also contributes to public history magazines and radio podcasts. She has published articles in the Times Literary Supplement, the BBC History Magazine, the BBC World Histories Magazine, and History Today. She has also contributed to podcasts and videos for History Extra and History Hit, and featured on BBC Radio programmes, including BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time: Nero and the BBC World Service’s The Forum: Nero, and BBC Radio 4’s You’re Dead to Me on Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.