Ryan S. Olson

Ryan S. Olson is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Prior to his arrival at UVA, he served as Fellow in Late Antiquity at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, and, for eight years, as Program Director for the Kern Family Foundation, a leading U.S. philanthropy concerned with educational reform. There, he planned and executed multi-grant, multi-million dollar initiatives on comparative education, school leadership, and character formation. By training, Olson is a historian interested in the cultural intersections of literature, religion, and personal relations in the Roman imperial and Late Antique Mediterranean worlds. He received his doctorate in classics from Oxford University in 2007. His book, Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery, a study of classical narrative epistolography in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts, was published in 2010 by Harvard University Press. He has written articles and essays on Roman history, Late Antiquity, and character education, and is co-editor with James Davison Hunter of a recently published book entitled The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation.