Ian Morris is a historian and archaeologist and holds Stanford's Jean and Rebecca Willard Professorship in Classics. In addition to his Stanford appointment, he is also a Senior Fellow of the IDEAS think tank at the London School of Economics, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Toulouse, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society for the Arts, a Contributing Editor at the strategic forecasting company Stratfor, and a member of the scientific advisory board of the Max Planck Institute.

He has excavated archaeological sites in Britain, Greece, and Italy, most recently as director of Stanford's dig at Monte Polizzo, a native Sicilian site from the age of Greek colonization. He began his career studying the rise of the Greek city-state, then moved on to ancient economics, and now works on global history since the Ice Age. He has published fourteen books. One of them, Why the West Rules--For Now (2010), has been translated into thirteen languages and has won a number of literary awards, including the 2011 PEN-USA prize for non-fiction. His most recent monograph, Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015), has been translated into six languages, and he is currently writing a new book called Fog in the Channel: Britain, Europe and the Wider World, 6000 BC-AD 2103.

In addition to digging and writing, he regularly speaks to academic, business, government, and strategy groups, and in recent years has been the Roman Professor of International Studies at the London School of Economics, a visiting professor in the University of Zurich's Business School, and a Distinguished Visitor in the Sage Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California-Santa Barbara. At Stanford he has served as Chair of the Classics department, Director of the Archaeology Center, and Senior Associate Dean of Humanities and Sciences. His research fellowships include awards from the Guggenheim and Carnegie foundations and the National Geographic Society, and he has received two honorary doctorates and a Dean's Award for excellence in teaching.

He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains with his wife, two dogs, five cats, two horses, and a floating population of peacocks.