Current Research
For research relating to the Beyond Notability project, visit the project website here.
Research related to my position as Research Officer for the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology at the University of Reading can be found on Ure Routes, a designated research blog. Details of research papers I have delivered at academic conferences can be found here.
Research related to my position as Research Officer for the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology at the University of Reading can be found on Ure Routes, a designated research blog. Details of research papers I have delivered at academic conferences can be found here.
Narrating the Diverse Past
In January 2021 I launched the website for this joint University of Reading and British Museum partnership project. Narrating the Diverse Past explored both inclusive archaeological collections histories and inclusive children's publishing. One main output of this work is a digital interactive exhibition, "Mapping Collections Histories: Barbados and Britain".
Petra 1929 Project
In January 2019 I launched a website on the first intensive excavations at Petra in 1929 conducted by a team that included George Horsfield and Agnes Conway. This project is funded by a Council for British Research in the Levant Centenary Award. The website consists of a full transcription of Horsfield and Conway's original excavation diary from 1929, with newly digitised photographs from their archive, and associated contextual essays written by me.
Popular Publishing
I was awarded a three-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2013-16) for a project entitled "Popular Publishing and the Construction of a British Archaeological Identity in the 19th and 20th centuries". The project featured an examination of extant publishers and archaeologists' archives. My central goal was to analyse the relationship between archaeologists and publishers, and how it effected the way archaeology and archaeologists were presented in popular print between 1870 and 1960.
Archaeology transformed from amateur pastime to professional practice during this period. The processes of writing and production, marketing and distribution was examined to explore how an "archaeological identity" was created and shaped over nearly a century of excavations, focusing primarily on British archaeologists working in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.
This project is the subject of my first book Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People, published in June 2018 with UCL Press.
Archaeology transformed from amateur pastime to professional practice during this period. The processes of writing and production, marketing and distribution was examined to explore how an "archaeological identity" was created and shaped over nearly a century of excavations, focusing primarily on British archaeologists working in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.
This project is the subject of my first book Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People, published in June 2018 with UCL Press.
Filming antiquity
I am currently Principal Investigator on Filming Antiquity, a collaborative digitisation and research project with an interdisciplinary team of UCL staff. The project has digitised and made publicly accessible film footage from 1930s British Mandate Palestine in the archive of archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding. The project website can be found here.
UCL History of Archaeology Network
I founded and have coordinated the History of Archaeology Network since 2010. In this role I have organised and run a series of lectures with scholars actively researching the history of archaeology during the academic year. I also created and manage the Network website, which includes a regularly updated list of events related to the history of archaeology, Directories of history of archaeology related projects, and history of archaeology related archives.
Apps
From July 2012 to August 2013 I was an Associate Producer for Ballista Media Ltd., as the project leader developing content for an interactive iPad app, Timeline: Civil War. This app follows Ballista’s previous history apps to present the American Civil War through military, political, social and cultural events, images and maps.
Along with Dr Paolo Del Vesco I co-produced content for an Android and iOS app, Vintage Abydos, in collaboration with two teams of UCL Computer Sciences students. This app deconstructs a photograph taken in Abydos, Egypt in 1902 showing the pioneering archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie. It is now available to download through UCL's internal App Lab.
With a third team of students, I developed and produced content for The Handy Shilling Calculator, an app enabling users to do basic calculations (adding, subtracting, multiplication and division) in pre-decimal British currency: pounds, shillings and pence. The app also includes extra interactive historical content, exploring related ephemera, archive documents, and oral histories.
Along with Dr Paolo Del Vesco I co-produced content for an Android and iOS app, Vintage Abydos, in collaboration with two teams of UCL Computer Sciences students. This app deconstructs a photograph taken in Abydos, Egypt in 1902 showing the pioneering archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie. It is now available to download through UCL's internal App Lab.
With a third team of students, I developed and produced content for The Handy Shilling Calculator, an app enabling users to do basic calculations (adding, subtracting, multiplication and division) in pre-decimal British currency: pounds, shillings and pence. The app also includes extra interactive historical content, exploring related ephemera, archive documents, and oral histories.