Trustees

Current Officers and Trustees

Neil Holbrook BA FSA MIfA (Chairman 2017-)

Neil Holbrook is Chief Executive of Cotswold Archaeology, one of the largest archaeological fieldwork organisations working in the UK. He previously worked on Hadrian’s Wall and for Exeter Museum. He has a particular interest in the Roman period and has published widely on Romano-British archaeology, including a series of excavation reports dealing with aspects of Roman Cirencester. He is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading and a Vice President of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. He is currently working on a project looking at the impact of developer-funded archaeology on our knowledge of Roman Britain.

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.

Dr James Gerrard ACIfA, FHEA (2016-)

James Gerrard is a Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University. His research interests include material culture, the Roman West Country, the end of Roman Britain and Late Antiquity. His publications include The Ruin of Roman Britain (Cambridge University Press 2013), articles in Britannia, The Archaeological Journal and other major periodicals as well as substantial excavation monographs. For some years he has been excavating the important Late Roman villa at Lufton in Somerset.

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.  

Julie Reynolds BA Hons, AMA, MInstF (Dip) (2019-)

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.

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