Benjamin (Ben) Hellings is the Jackson-Tomasko Associate Curator of Numismatics at the Yale University Art Gallery and is responsible for the entire collection, which currently comprises well over 130,000 objects, the largest university collection in North America. His time is spent making acquisitions, designing exhibits, researching, and cataloging. He joined the Art Gallery in 2016 and holds M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on coin find patterns and the use of Roman coinage in northern Europe.
Ben is a numismatist with interests across the discipline and has published widely on numismatic subjects, ranging from Greek and Roman coinage to early American colonial coins and American bank note material. His research interests include the quantification of ancient coin production and the economy, the circulation and use of coins, and the use of numismatic “big data” for research and teaching, as well as in proof bank notes and related material.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, a biennial journal which publishes original scholarship on works in the Gallery’s collection.
Books and Edited Volumes
- The Naseby Cup: Coins and Medals of the English Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024)
- Coin Finds and Monetization in the Roman Northwest (New York: American Numismatic Society, 2025)
- Roman Coin Hoards Across Frontiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026), co-editor with Marguerite Spoerri Butcher, and Chris Howgego