Assistant Roman Curator at the American Numismatic Society
ISAW Visiting Research Scholar 2010-2011
Gilles Bransbourg studied Economics, Mathematics and Statistics in Paris at Lycée Louis-Le-Grand, École Polytechnique, Institut d'Études Politiques and École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique between 1983 and 1990. He spent 15 years in the Banking industry where he worked initially as a market economist and strategist. Later he worked in derivatives and structured products in fixed income and foreign exchange markets, becoming a director and managing director for a few different firms. Although still active in that sector as a financial advisor, Bransbourg resigned from his former assignments in 2005 to dedicate himself to economic historical research. He completed a PhD at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris with Jean-Michel Carrié, focusing on Roman taxation and Monetary Economy. He joined the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World as a Visiting Research Scholar and then Research Associate from 2009 onward, and joined the American Numismatic Society after 2010 as an Adjunct Curator of Roman Coins. His work concentrates on linking numerical information of the ancient economy with the social, political and military dynamics of the Hellenistic, Roman and early medieval world. He has recently focused on the concept of the value of money, a path that leads him to reassess the unstable degree of confidence displayed by ancient Greeks and Romans vs. fiat coinages. He recently published two articles in Antiquité Tardive: “Fiscalité Impériale et Finances Municipales au IVè siècle,” 16 (2008), and “Julien, l'Immunitas Christi, les Dieux et les Cités,” 17 (2009), as well as “Fides et Pecunia Numerata. Chartalism and Metallism in the Roman World. Part 1: The Republic” in the American Journal of Numismatics 23 (2011). His forthcoming “Rome and the Economic Integration of Empire" is to be soon available as an ISAW Papers at <http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/3>. He is also co-author of a book commissioned by the French Prime Minister, La Politique Monétaire de l'Euro (2009), and teaches for the Executive Master of Finance of Sciences Po in Paris as well as occasionally publishes articles and columns on economics and finance. He is the curator of “Signs of Inflation”, the exhibition recently launched by the American Numismatic Society at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, alongside its permanent exhibition, “Drachmas, Doubloons and Dollars: The History of Money”.
