Brown and the Department of Classics hosted the annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians (AAH) in the spring semester, May 4-6, 2017. Over 100 participants attended the event that took place on campus in Alumnae Hall. Professors John Bodel and Graham Oliver, the conference organizers, selected twenty-two papers that addressed a wide range of themes: Harbor Cultures, Refugees and Asylum, Contingency and the ancient economy, New Religions, Slaves and Family, and The Reception of Ancient Historians and Ancient History in the New World.

On the opening night of the meeting, Professor Greg Woolf gave a plenary paper titled 'The Politics of Syncretism in Classical Antiquity'. Brown hosted the meeting for only the second time, the last occasion was back in 1989. Faculty, staff, and graduate students from the Classics Deptartment and especially the Ancient History PhD program played an important role in running the program and the event, supported by the Conference office. The conference received financial support from the C. V. Starr Lectureship Fund, The Program in Early Cultures, the Departments of Classics, Egyptology & Assyriology, History, and Religious Studies, and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.

Membership of the AAH is inexpensive and next year's meeting is at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.