Peter Heather

Peter Heather has been fiercely criticized by members of the so-called Toronto School of History. Michael Kulikowski, who belongs to this group, has accused Heather of neo-romanticism and of wishing "to revive a biological approach to ethnicity". Kulikowski claims that Heather "manifests a clear methodological affinity" to the 19th-century writer of the Goths Henry Bradley.

Along with Bryan Ward-Perkins and others scholars affiliated with the University of Oxford, Heather belongs to a new generation of historians who beginning in the early 2000s started to challenge theories on Late Antiquity that had been prevalent since the 1970s. These older theories generally denied the importance of ethnic identity, barbarian migrations and Roman decline in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Heather's works have been generally accepted in academia as the definite narrative on the fall of Rome.

Peter John Heather (born 8 June 1960) is a British historian of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. He is chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. Heather specializes in the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Goths, on which he for decades has been considered the world's leading authority.

Heather was born in Northern Ireland on 8 June 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, and received his M.A. and D.Phil. from New College, Oxford. At Oxford he came under the influence of John Matthews and James Howard-Johnston. Heather subsequently lectured at Worcester College, Oxford, Yale University and University College London. In January 2008, Heather was appointed chair of the Medieval History Department and professor of medieval history at King's College London.