Prof. Toni Ñaco del Hoyo (PhD 1996, UAB) is a Roman Historian. Before joining ICREA in 2009 he held Catalan and Spanish funded postdoctoral positions at Oxford for 3 years till 2002, Fulbright Visiting Fellowship at UC Berkeley (2004), and a Ramón y Cajal position at UAB (2004-9). Research awards as PI: H.F. Guggenheim Foundation (2007), RICIP (2010; 2012-3), 5 Spanish R+D Grants (one ongoing), Icrea Conference Award (2012), Tytus Visiting Fellowship at U.Cincinnati (2014); grants for archaeological research (2018-21; 2022-5). He is currently an Academic Visitor at Classics (Oxford). He has sponsored 6 postdocs (2012-4; 2018-25) and 3 PhD assistants. In 2015 he moved to UdG, where he coordinated a funded SGR Consolidated Group (2017-21; 2022-5). He has successfully supervised 6 PhD theses and he is currently supervising 3 further theses. Member of the editorial board of Colección Libera Res Publica (Zaragoza-Sevilla), and of its Research Network (2023-5, officially funded).
Research interests
Prof. Ñaco del Hoyo's research and interests lie predominantly with the history of Republican Rome. Across his entire career, he has conducted research on Republican finances and taxation, collateral damage, garrisoning strategies, asymmetrical warfare, military intelligence and logistics, crisis management, international relations, and ancient peace studies. For the last ten years, he has been exploring the integration and connectivity of the northeast of Iberia and the rest of the north-western Mediterranean in c. 150-70 BCE, as shown in a recent volume by Oxbow Books (2022), and co-edited alongside J. Principal (Barcelona) and M. Dobson (Exeter). Additionally, he is co-editing a ‘Brill’s Companion to the Mercenaries of the Ancient Western Mediterranean’, alongside J. Armstrong (Auckland) and L. Rawlings (Cardiff), and he is also currently involved in revisiting his seminal research on Republican war economy and taxation.
Selected publications
- Ñaco del Hoyo T 2025, ‘The economic benefits and political costs of empire building’. A review-article of M. Girardin, ed., Fiscalités antiques aux origins de l’administration provinciale romaine, Rome, 2023; C.H. Lange, From Hannibal to Sulla. The Birth of Civil War in Republican Rome, Berlin & Boston, 2024; F. Biglino, The War Economy of the Roman Republic (406-100 BCE), Leiden & Boston, 2025’, in: Classical Review (First View, 26-11-2025, 9 pp.)
Selected research activities
Conference and seminar organisation (with J. García, G. Ventós, G. Cabezas): The Sertorian War, a Roman Civil Conflict on a Mediterranean Scale. Ud.Girona, March 11-12; GERRM IX. Seminari del Grup d’Estudis sobre la República Romana Mitjana, UdGirona, Nov. 14. Guest speaker: Dr. Marian Helm (Münster).
Invited talk (with A. Tosques): "How to fund your own army: Sertorius and financing warlordism in the Late Republic", in The Sertorian War... March 11-12.
Oral communication & panel: "War-Weariness in the Roman Republic” - Session H 08 “Positive peace” attitudes in Classical and Post-Classical Antiquity - 17th Congress of the FIEC, Poland, July 10.
Invited talk (with Gerard Ventós): “Tax evasion and faction fighting in the Mid-Republican West”, «Résistances à l’impôt dans le monde romain», Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, September 14.
Invited talk: “La fatiga de guerra en la República Media" - VI Seminario "Libera Res Publica. Foro de Historiadores Españoles de la República Romana, Univ. Santiago de Compostela October 6-7.
Invited talk: “What was a ‘tax’ for the western provincial subjects of the Roman Republic? And why asking (again) now?”, GERRM IX (Girona, Nov. 14, 2025).
Scientific assessments: Agencia Estatal de Investigación (research Project grants); Portland State University (Oregon, USA, promotions).
Publication endorsement: D. Hoyos, Scipio Africanus. The First Imperator, Reaktion Books, London, 2025.
Short-term research stay: Oxford , UK (Classics Faculty), January 7-14.