Brent Donald Shaw born May 27, 1947 is a Canadian historian as well as the current Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics at Princeton University. His principal contributions center on a regional history of the Roman world with special emphasis on the African provinces of the Roman Empire, the demographic as well as social history of the Roman family, together with problems of violence and social order.
Shaw received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Alberta in 1968 and 1971 respectively. He later acquired his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1978, completing his dissertation research on pastoral nomadism and state regulation under the management of Joyce Reynolds.
After an initial post at the Institute for innovative Study in 1994, and two years as a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1989 and 1995. Shaw then took up a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996, which he held until taking up the Andrew Fleming West professorship of Classics at Princeton University in 2004. In 2012, Shaw was elected a resident detail of the American Philosophical Society.