Members 

The International Centre for Heritage (ICH) is based at the University of Birmingham.

Members of ICH include staff at the university of Birmingham with interests and expertise in heritage, and  whose research reflects the interdisciplinary nature of heritage. 

Director

Dr Faye Sayer

Dr Faye Sayer

Assistant Professor in Heritage and History
Director, International Centre for Heritage

Department of History

I am interested in the value cultural heritage has to communities, and how it can or has the potential to impact human and social capital; including wellbeing, mental health and human dignity. 

Members

Michael Allen

Michael Allen

Doctoral researcher

International Centre for Heritage

Professor Richard Butler

Professor Richard Butler

Professor of Palaeobiology
Director of Research, College of Life and Environmental Sciences

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Richard is a vertebrate palaeontologist with expertise in the systematics, evolution and biogeography of late Palaeozoic to Mesozoic reptiles. His research addresses major patterns and drivers of biodiversity change through deep time, particularly as exemplified by four-limbed vertebrates (tetrapods), over the last 375 million years. He is also interested in the origin and dramatic ...

Dr Alexander M. Cannon

Dr Alexander M. Cannon

Senior Lecturer in Music

Department of Music

I am an ethnomusicologist of southern Vietnamese traditional music, creativity, and popular culture.

Professor Henry Chapman

Professor Henry Chapman

Professor of Archaeology

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

Henry’s research interests centre on the later prehistoric period, and particularly the relationships between human activity and environmental change within past landscapes and focusing on wetland sites. He specialises in the use of digital technologies to enable the modelling and analysis of the wide range of information required for such study to engage with past sites and landscapes.

Thi ...

Jon Clatworthy

Jon Clatworthy

Director of the Lapworth Museum of Geology

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Jon studied geology as an undergraduate, before undertaking an MSc in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. He worked as a geology-natural sciences assistant curator and curator for 20 years, before becoming the Director of the Lapworth Museum of Geology, in 2012. Jon led the transformational redevelopment of the Lapworth Museum between 2014 and 2016, which saw the Lapworth re-orientate ...

Dr Kirsty Edgar

Dr Kirsty Edgar

Associate Professor in Micropalaeontology
Head of Research in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Kirsty is a micropalaeontologist and palaeoceanographer, specialising in planktic foraminifer and foraminifer-based geochemical records. She is interested in understanding the timing and nature of the interaction between global climate, geochemical cycling, and biota during the Cenozoic. A major research focus is elucidating the dynamics and consequences of transient climate events in the ...

Lee Hale

Head of Winterbourne

International Centre for Heritage

Lee began his career as a horticultural apprentice at Birmingham Botanical Gardens and followed his training with further and higher education at the renowned Pershore College of Horticulture. Following a series of roles in the horticultural and heritage sectors, Lee returned to Birmingham in the late 1990s to take up a position as a lecturer and horticultural supervisor.  He is currently ...

Dr Michala Hulme

Dr Michala Hulme

Lecturer in Public History

Department of History

I am an award-winning historian of nineteenth-century British history, with a particular focus on the experience of living and dying in the urban environment. I am also a public historian who works with charities, community groups, the media, heritage organisations and museums, helping to engage the wider public in history. My last research project Finding the Peterloo Eleven, was shortlisted for

Dr Claire Jones

Dr Claire Jones

Senior Lecturer in History of Art

Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies

My specialisms are French and British sculpture and the decorative arts 1800-1900, with a particular interest in intersections between sculpture and the decorative arts, between art and industry, and in curating the decorative. 

Dr Helle Jørgensen

Dr Helle Jørgensen

Lecturer in Cultural Heritage Studies

Department of History

An anthropologist by education, I enjoy doing interdisciplinary research. My main interest is the production of heritage in post/colonial contexts and the associated politics of history, social memory and development, including local as well as transnational relations and practices, from heritage management to tourism and the social lives of the people living near designated heritage sites.

Dr Niveen Kassem

Dr Niveen Kassem

Assistant Professor in Arabic Cultural Studies.
Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music

Dubai Campus

 

 Dr Niveen Kassem is Assistant professor in Arabic Cultural Studies.

Her research activities are broad and build on interconnected thematic areas such as heritage, cultural studies, memory, identity and trauma in contemporary literature and culture. Her current research explores historical trauma and its impact on the shaping of contemporary identities and memories of ...

Dr Ioanna Katapidi

Dr Ioanna Katapidi

Lecturer

Department of History

I am a Lecturer at the Ironbridge Centre for Heritage, University of Birmingham, interested in the interaction between people and place and the role of heritage in this interaction. I am particularly interested in the role of heritage in place making and place identity in urban and rural areas, exploring especially local communities’ perceptions and their dynamics and potential in ...

Lingjun Li

Lingjun Li

Doctoral researcher

International Centre for Heritage

Amy Luck

Research Assistant

Department of History

Amy Luck is a public historian who specialises in understanding, quantifying, and sharing the value and impact of cultural heritage, particularly on wellbeing and mental health.

Dr Maeve McHugh

Dr Maeve McHugh

Lecturer in Classical Archaeology

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

I am an archaeologist with expertise in the Greek Archaic to Classical periods. I work with historical and archaeological data to reconstruct the lives of rural non-elite individuals and communities in the Greek world to learn more about the interrelationships between physical, social, and cultural landscapes.

Dr Leire Olabarria

Dr Leire Olabarria

Lecturer in Egyptology

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

I am a Lecturer in Egyptology with an interest in the application of social and cultural anthropology to the study of ancient Egypt. My work focuses on kinship and marriage in the Middle Kingdom and on the social construction of monumental spaces. I am also a field archaeologist and have been working at the site of Dayr el-Barsha in Middle Egypt since 2012.

Mark Pickel

Mark Pickel

Honorary Fellow

International Centre for Heritage

Mark Pickel has been employed by The Biltmore Company in Asheville, North Carolina since 2000, currently in the position of Chief Financial Officer. As a member of Biltmore’s executive committee, his responsibilities include providing strategic leadership of corporate accounting, treasury, technology and winery operations. Mark is committed to the preservation of Biltmore Estate, a ...

Sam Powell

Sam Powell

Doctoral Researcher

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

Professor Helaine Silverman

Visiting Research Fellow
Director of CHAMP/Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

International Centre for Heritage

Helaine’s research interests focus on the cooperative and conflictual production of archaeological monuments as cultural heritage sites for visual, performative, economic and political consumption as undertaken by national governments, regional authorities, local administrations, and community stakeholders within the context of the global tourism industry and UNESCO’s international ...

Dr Katharine Sykes

Dr Katharine Sykes

Associate Professor in Early Medieval History

Department of History

I work on the creation and regulation of communities in the early and central middle ages. I’m particularly interested in the ways in which institutions or groups of people – as well as individuals – were gendered. I’ve just finished writing a book on monasteries and families in the early middle ages (600CE-1100CE); previously, I’ve worked on the origins of ...

Honorary members

Dr John Carman

Dr John Carman

Honorary Senior Lecturer in Heritage Valuation

I am an archaeologist with an interest in what archaeology ‘does’ in the world – how it came to be as it is, why we study what we do in the way we do it, and what that means in terms of understanding ourselves. I work particularly in two fields: cultural heritage; and conflict archaeology, especially the archaeology of battlefields. I have been recently honoured with a ...

Professor Mike Robinson

Professor Mike Robinson

Emeritus Professor of Cultural Heritage

My interests lie in how we produce and consume categories of heritage within changing cultural and cross-cultural contexts. I am particularly interested in how tourists experience the past and how tourism works with heritage to shape identities at the individual and collective level.