Stephen Mitchell (historian)

Stephen Mitchell (26 May 1948 - 30 January 2024) was a British historian and epigrapher, specialising in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Anatolia. He was a professor at Swansea and Exeter University.

Life
Stephen Mitchell was the son of David Mitchell, a tutor of philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford, and Barbara Mitchell, a tutor of Latin at St Anne's College, Oxford. He studied literae humaniores at St John's College, Oxford from 1966 to 1970 and then undertook a DPhil on The History and Archaeology of Galatia under the supervision of Ewen Bowie and Eric Gray, which he completed in 1975. Mitchell and his partner Matina had three children: Lawrence, Daniel, and Samuel.

Career
Mitchell was a temporary lecturer of Latin and ancient history at the University of Bristol from 1973 to 1974 and had a research lectureship at Christ Church, Oxford from 1975 to 1976. He was lecturer in ancient history at the University of Swansea from 1976 until 1993, when he was promoted to full professor. From 2002 until 2012, he was Levehulme Professor of Hellenistic Culture at Exeter University, where he established a "Centre for Hellenistic Culture and Society," and served as head of department.

Mitchell became a member of the British Institute at Ankara in 1970, serving as a member of its council, as honorary secretary (1996–1999, 2009–2014), as chair (2016–2021), and as vice-president (2023–2024). His advocacy of the institute was "instrumental in its transformation into a substantial research powerhouse that connects the ancient and the contemporary." He was also President of the British Epigraphy Society (1999–2002) and of the Association Internationale d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (AIEGL, 2008–2012).

Research
Mitchell's research focussed on Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Anatolia. His doctoral thesis on Galatia was innovative for its combination of literary, archaeological, and epigraphic sources. In the 1980s, he established the "Pisidia Survey Project", which carried out archaeological survey work in Pisidia and Pamphylia, in collaboration with Marc Waelkens, Sabri Aydal, and Lut Vandeput. He authored or co-authored monographs on Cremna, Pisidian Antioch, and the Via Sebaste.

In addition, to this regionally focussed work, Mitchell produced more wide-ranging works of religious and cultural history, beginning with Anatolia: land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor (1993). In the 2000s, Mitchell directed an AHRC project on "Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire", arguing for the existence of monotheism in the Greco-Roman world outside of the Abrahamic religions.

In the 2010s, Mitchell and David French co-authored a corpus of The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Ankara (Ancyra) (2012, 2019).

Recognition
Mitchell was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and subsequently served on its council. He received an honorary doctorate in theology from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2006 and became an honorary fellow of St. John's College, Oxford in 2018. In 2020, Mitchell received the Gustave Schlumberger Prize from the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for services to epigraphy and his volumes on the inscriptions of Ankara.