Josephine Crawley Quinn (born 10 September 1973) is an Irish historian and archaeologist, working across ancient Mediterranean history. Appointed on 1 January 2025, she is the first woman to hold the Professorship of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, and is a fellow at St. John's College.^[1][2] Quinn was previously Professor of Ancient History in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Worcester College, University of Oxford.^[3]

Quinn obtained a BA in classical studies in 1996 from Wadham College, Oxford.^[4] She then obtained an MA (1998) and PhD (2003) in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, where her supervisor was Erich Gruen.^[5] In 2001–2002, she was the Ralegh Radford Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome.^[4] In 2003–2004 she was a College Lecturer in Ancient History at St John's College, Oxford, and held her fellowship of Worcester College from 2004 to 2024.^[4] In 2008 she was a visiting scholar at the Getty Villa.^[6]

Quinn is co-director of the Oxford Centre for Phoenician and Punic Studies,^[7] and co-director of the Tunisian-British Excavations at Utica, Tunisia with Andrew Wilson and Elizabeth Fentress.^[4][8]

Between 2006 and 2011, Quinn served as the editor of the Papers of the British School at Rome.

Quinn won the Zvi Meitar/Vice-Chancellor Oxford University Research Prize in the Humanities in 2009.^[9] She has published numerous articles and two co-edited volumes, the Hellenistic West, and The Punic Mediterranean.^[4] In 2018 Quinn published the monograph In Search of the Phoenicians, described as a pioneering and exhilarating volume,^[10] which argues that the idea of the Phoenicians as a distinct, self-identifying group, is a modern invention.^[11] The book was awarded the Society for Classical Studies Goodwin Award of Merit in 2019.^[12]

In 2024, Quinn published How the World Made the West, a history of "Western civilization" from the Bronze Age to the Age of Discovery and a critique of its supposed basis in Graeco-Roman culture. The book was favourably reviewed. Steven Poole in The Guardian declared: "this book triumphs as a brilliant and learned challenge to modern western chauvinism. To the extent that we have inherited classical culture, Quinn reminds us, it is in a rather perverted form."^[13] Tristram Hunt in The Financial Times wrote: "Among Quinn’s achievements is her use of advanced discoveries in DNA to scuttle dearly held civilisational myths. The idea of a separate Etruscan race in the ninth century BC is shot down by evidence of their genetic profile being very similar to their Italian neighbours."^[14]

During 2025 she was appointed Professor of Ancient History at the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge and was appointed a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge^[15].

Quinn contributes to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and has appeared on BBC Radio Three and Four.^[16]

Quinn is the daughter of the former MEP Christine Crawley, Baroness Crawley.

• Quinn, J.C. 2010. The reinvention of Lepcis. In Bollettino di Archeologia ON LINE. Roma 2008 - International Congress of Classical Archaeology Meetings Between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean.
• Quinn, J. and Wilson, A. 2013. "Capitolia". Journal of Roman Studies 103: 117–173.
• Quinn, J.C., McLynn, N, Kerr and R.M., Hadas, D. 2014. "Augustine's Canaanities". Papers of the British School at Rome 82: 175–197.
• Quinn, J.C. and Vella, N.C. 2014. The Punic Mediterranean: Identities and Identification from Phoenician Settlement to Roman Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Quinn, J.C. 2017. "Translating empire from Carthage to Rome". Classical Philology 112(3): 312–331.
• Quinn, J. 2018. In Search of the Phoenicians. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Quinn, J. 2024. How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History. Bloomsbury Press.