About Matthew

Matthew Larsen is a historian, archaeologist, and storyteller who brings the ancient world to life. A professor at the University of Copenhagen, he specializes in uncovering the real lives of the first Christians—what they built, how they lived, and what history gets wrong about them.

Before Copenhagen, he taught at Yale and Princeton, and his award-winning book Gospels before the Book (Oxford, 2018) has been translated into Italian. His latest book, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (University of California Press, co-authored with Mark Letteney), explores what imprisonment really meant in the ancient world and is available for pre-order now.

Matthew’s research has been featured in Newsweek, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Live Science, The Daily Beast, Christian Century, and other major outlets, and he leads an ambitious project reconstructing ancient prisons in stunning 3D detail. With a passion for history that challenges assumptions and a knack for making the past feel urgent and real, he’s not only changing the way we see the ancient world, but also how we imagine the future.