Trustees

Current Officers and Trustees

Julie Reynolds BA Hons, AMA, MInstF (Dip) (Chairperson 2023-)

Julie Reynolds graduated from University College London with a degree in archaeology with a particular interest in Roman archaeology and material culture. After working on various archaeological excavations, mainly as a Finds Supervisor, she spent ten years as a curator with the National Museum of Wales with responsibility for the collection at the Roman Legionary Museum, Caerleon. She published a number of academic articles during this role with specific research interests in Roman artefactual studies, Roman burial practice and Roman epigraphy. Recently Julie was appointed as a regional National Trust Curator, with responsibility for a wide range of sites and properties from Neolithic Long Barrows to Arts and Crafts Gardens. Amongst these is Chedworth Roman Villa. In addition to academic qualifications, she is an Associate of the Museum Association and holds a Diploma in Fundraising from the Institute of Fundraising.

Rob Hopwood MBA, FCCA (Treasurer 2016-)

Rob is Bursar at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow. He is responsible for the College’s finances and investments, estates strategy and general operations, human resource management, commercial conference business, regulatory compliance and for supporting the mission of the College as a place of learning, education and research. He was educated at the University of Southampton and Geneva University in Switzerland. After graduating as a modern linguist, Rob specialised in Finance and Corporate Services roles, spending 14 years in Cambridge at Jesus College and then Trinity College, before serving for over 8 years as The British Academy’s Director of Finance and Corporate Services.

Dr Eleanor Ghey MA PhD (2021-)

Dr Eleanor Ghey is Curator: Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards at the British Museum, where she has been employed since 2007. She studied archaeology before training and working as a museum conservator until 2000. Her doctoral research was on Gallo-Roman temple sites and she has worked as a post-doctoral researcher on roundhouses in Wales and on the AHRC funded Iron Age and Roman coin hoards in Britain project (in collaboration with Leicester University). She has research interests in the Iron Age to Roman transition period and her current role involves recording coin hoards reported as Treasure under the Treasure Act 1996.

Amanda Hart BA MA FMA (2023-)

Amanda is the Roman Baths and Pump Room Manager, responsible for the curatorial direction of the Roman Baths Museum, the associated learning and engagement programmes, and making the collections accessible to a diverse audience. She was previously the Museum Director of the Corinium Museum where she managed the redevelopment of the Prehistory and early Roman galleries. She studied Archaeology at the University of Reading where she became interested in material culture and the role objects play in interpreting past societies in museums. This led her to study Museum Studies, at the University of Leicester, where she specialised in Archaeological Curatorship. She has worked in a variety of roles in museums with Roman collections for over 25 years. She is also a Fellow of the Museums Association.

Professor Will Bowden (2019-)

Dr Will Bowden is Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Nottingham with research interests lie in both the UK and the Mediterranean, focusing particularly on Roman towns and late Roman transitions. He has been involved in fieldwork in the UK, Italy, Albania and Jordan, particularly at Butrint in Albania and since 2006 he has been leading a major research project at Venta Icenorum (Caistor-by-Norwich).  He is also interested in community archaeology and the use of new technologies for site presentation. His most recent book, Butrint 5: Life and Death at a Mediterranean Port (Oxford, 2020), details the rich material evidence from a major late Roman domus.  

Philippa Walton PhD (2019-)

Dr Philippa Walton is a Research Fellow at the University of Reading. Educated at Girton College, Cambridge and UCL, her research focuses on the role that artefacts play in understanding life in Roman Britain. Over the past 15 years, she has catalogued the huge assemblage of Romano-British objects from the River Tees at Piercebridge and has published extensively on the use of coinage in the province and was awarded the Blunt Prize for Numismatics by the British Numismatic Society in 2014. She is currently working on a Leverhulme-funded project exploring the function of assemblages of objects found at bridges and river-crossings in the western Roman provinces.

Prof. Daniel Pett (2022-)

Daniel was previously Digital Humanities lead at the British Museum, where he designed and implemented digital innovation connecting humanities research, museum practice, and the creative industries. In doing so, he has created extensive cross-disciplinary and cross-sector networks. He is an advocate of open access, open source and reproducible research. He is an honorary Professor at Stirling University, an honorary Lecturer at UCL Institute of Archaeology, Research Affiliate of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and publishes regularly in the fields of museum studies, archaeology and digital humanities. He is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London and the Royal Geographical Society, was an RHSA Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Digital Humanities Research, Australian National University (2019) and is a member of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Former Trustees