His current work is situated at the intersection of paleoclimatology, the history of institutions, and historical change.

He is the Principal Investigator of a major National Science Foundation funded project investigating the link between explosive volcanic eruptions, Nile flood behavior, and human responses to climatic change with very broad implications for understanding climatic change across the pre-industrial world.

Before coming to Yale, Manning taught in the Classics Department for two years at Princeton University.

[6][7] He is a collaborative member of Yale's Program in Economic History, and was a founder of the comparative premodern history group at Yale, Archaia[8] Manning grew up in Western Springs, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago.

(1985) and Ph.D. (1992) from the University of Chicago in Egyptology, specializing in Demotic (Egyptian) language and texts.