Forts and Roman Strategy

After a career in the British civil service in roles including transport policy, Paul Coby became Chief Information Officer in charge of digital technology at British Airways and then the John Lewis Partnership. In 2018 he joined Johnson Matthey, a global leader in sustainable technologies, as CIO. He is also a member of the advisory panel of AND Digital, a digital accelerator in the UK and Europe.

He believes that his experience in digital technology has enabled him to deploy data analysis and visualisation to the Roman Army’s campaign methods and to apply organisational theory to how the Roman military machine thought.

He has always been fascinated by the Roman Army and how it succeeded in controlling an empire from the Highlands of Scotland to the deserts of Arabia. He continues to deploy up-to-date data analysis techniques to Roman forts and campaigns to generate new insights into the mind of the Roman military machine, now turning to the Roman Limes in Germany and Romania, as well as the Roman Army's response to Boudica’s Revolt and the dense network of forts in Northern England.

Mike Bishop is a specialist on the Roman army, with many publications to his name including the acclaimed and widely used Roman Military Equipment (2006). The founding editor of Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies, he has also led several excavations of Roman sites.