Board of Visitors

pitt rivers museum by john cairns 25 9 18 31

Board of Visitors

Prof Paul Basu

Prof Basu has long-standing research interests in the history of anthropology and anthropological collecting. He is currently leading a three-year AHRC-funded research project entitled Museum Affordances, of which the Pitt Rivers Museum is a partner, focusing on the ethnographic collections and archives assembled by N. W. Thomas in Nigeria and Sierra Leone in the early 20th century.

Professor Andrew Briggs

Professor Andrew Briggs is the inaugural holder of the Chair in Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford. His research interests focus on nanomaterials for quantum technologies and their incorporation into practical devices. He is a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, and Member of Academia Europaea. He has over 600 publications, with more than 27,000 citations.

Ms Hannah Eastham

Hannah Eastham is a DPhil Anthropology student at the University of Oxford affiliated with the Pitt Rivers Museum. She is currently undertaking a project supervised by Christopher Morton and Dolores Martinez on a selection of Japanese photographs from the James Hornell collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.

Dr Linda Flores (Junior Proctor)

Linda Flores is Junior Proctor of the University and an Associate Professor in Modern Japanese Literature in the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Fellow in Japanese Studies at Pembroke College. In the faculty, she has recently served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and has also played an active role in supporting equality, diversity, and outreach. At Pembroke, she has served as Deputy Dean, Welfare Fellow, and Equality and Diversity Fellow. Her areas of expertise include Japanese women writers, gender theory, trauma fiction, and contemporary Japanese literature.

Prof Nandini Gooptu

Nandini Gooptu is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony's College. Educated in Kolkata and Cambridge, she is the author of The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early-Twentieth Century India, editor of Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India, and joint-editor of India and the British Empire and The Persistence of Poverty in India.

Professor Trish Greenhalgh

Professor Trisha Greenhalgh OBE is a medical doctor and Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She undertakes research at the interface between social sciences and medicine, with a particular focus on the potential of technologies to transform care (for better or worse).

Prof Helena Hamerow

Helena is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology in the School of Archaeology and the History Faculty. Her research focuses on rural communities in early medieval NW Europe. She is PI of an ERC-funded project, ‘Feeding Anglo-Saxon England. The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution’ (http://feedsax.arch.ox.ac.uk). Helena was an elected member of the University of Oxford's Council from 2016-20 and is a Commissioner of Historic England.

Prof Clare Harris

Prof Clare Harris FBA is Curator for Asia Collections and Professor of Visual Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of Magdalen College.

Ms Melanie Keen

Melanie Keen is Director of Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library in London which aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health. Prior to joining in October 2019, she was Director and Chief Curator at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), where she was instrumental in the revitalisation of Iniva’s mission and vision by making the library collection its creative hub.

Ms Iliane Ogilvie Thompson

Chair of the Pitt Rivers Museum Development Advisory Board.

Mr Richard Ovenden OBE

Richard Ovenden has been Bodley’s Librarian since 2014, the senior executive position of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. In February 2022 he was also appointed Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University. He sits on the Board of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, and the Council on Library and Information Resources and is currently President of the Digital Preservation Coalition. He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2019 and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College.

Sir Jonathan Phillips, Warden of Keble College, Oxford

Sir Jonathan Phillips (Chair)

Sir Jonathan Phillips has been Warden of Keble College since 2010. His earlier career was in the UK Civil Service, which he joined in 1977 after completing a history PhD on an aspect of Anglo-Irish relations in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His final roles in Whitehall, between 2002 and 2010, were as Political Director and then Permanent Secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, working closely with Prime Ministers Blair and Brown on the peace process. He is also chair of the board of trustees of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

Prof David Pratten

David Pratten is Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. David is a social anthropologist whose research is based on a long-term engagement with Annang villagers in south-eastern Nigeria and focuses on themes of history, violence and the state. David has also worked closely with Pitt Rivers Museum colleagues on its displays of West African masks and in 2018 collected a mask for the collection in Nigeria.

Prof Paul Smith

Paul Smith is Director of Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Professor of Natural History. He is a geologist by training and has spent most of his career working in university museums at the universities of Cambridge, Copenhagen, Birmingham and Oxford. Paul has served as Co-Chair of University Museums Group UK and has been a President of both The Micropalaeontological Society and the Palaeontological Association.

Prof Nick Thomas

Nicholas Thomas has been Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge since 2006. His books include many co-authored with Pacific Islander scholars and artists, Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire (2010), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, and The Return of Curiosity: what museums are good for in the twenty-first century (2016).

Ms Sara Wajid

Sara is Co-CEO of Birmingham Museums alongside Zak Mensah – this job-share CEO partnership is a first in the museum sector and signals Birmingham Museum Trust’s commitment to inclusive working practices. Sara was formerly Head of Engagement at Museum of London and Head of Interpretation at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2017. Before working in museums she was a cultural commentator, journalist and editor.

Prof Laura Van Broekhoven

Laura is the Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics and Material Culture at the University of Oxford. Laura holds a Professorial Fellowship at Linacre College, and is associated with the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford. Previously she led the curatorial department of the National Museum of World Cultures (Amsterdam, Leiden and Berg en Dal) and was a lecturer in archaeology, museum studies and indigenous heritage at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University.

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