Meet the team

Seren Griffiths

Seren is a Senior Lecturer in Public Archaeology and Archaeological Science at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a heritage specialist and archaeologist, and the PI of project TIME. She has period specialisms in European prehistory, with methodological specialisms in archaeological science and the history of archaeological thought, and has worked in excavation and post-excavation projects internationally. In 2018, she delivered the Golson Lecturer at Australian National University, and she is currently a 2020-2021 BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She sits on the Highways England Scientific Committee for the ‘A303 Stonehenge Road Scheme’ where the project impacts on the World Heritage Site. She co-directs the Bryn Celli Ddu public archaeology landscape project. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeology. Her favourite ice cream flavour is mint choc chip.

Julian Thomas

Julian Thomas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester, UK. He was educated at the Universities of Bradford and Sheffield, and previously taught at Lampeter and Southampton Universities. His books include Archaeology and Modernity, The Birth of Neolithic Britain and (with Keith Ray) Neolithic Britain: The Transformation of Social Worlds. He has excavated widely in England, Scotland and Wales, was a co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, and is currently directing a programme of fieldwork in southwest Herefordshire with Keith Ray. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a member of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Ben Edwards

Ben is Reader in Heritage and Archaeology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His current research covers two main areas: the use of advanced digital technologies in heritage management and public engagement, and the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain. This includes crowd-sourcing images of heritage assets from the public to create detailed and interactive web-hosted 3D models, creating an AR-enriched environment for Bryn Celli Ddu Neolithic passage tomb (Anglesey), and co-directing two ongoing fieldwork projects, at Bryn Celli Ddu, and the henges of the Millfield basin (Northumberland). He has also undertaken work in Myanmar on satellite remote sensing and digital recording, and has been invited to work in Cameroon with sustainable tourism specialists to capture data from drone overflights.

Neil Carlin

Neil is a lecturer in the School of Archaeology at University College Dublin. His research concentrates on people’s relationships with other people, places, plants, animals and things in Ireland and Britain and their wider European contexts during the 2nd, 3rd and fourth millennia BC. Much of this  focuses on how people use(d) material culture to negotiate, reproduce and communicate their social value and identities.

Tom Higham

Tom is the Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. His research interests are in archaeological dating using AMS, radiocarbon AMS dating of bone, the chronology of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, reservoir effects in 14C, the application of Bayesian calibration methods to archaeological dating, dating novel sample types and sample pretreatment chemistry.

Penny Johnston

Penny is a post-doctoral research associate on Project Time, based at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is an archaeobotanist (specialising in non-wood plant remains; mostly seeds and cereal grains). She has worked on commercial projects in Ireland and research projects in Russia. When not looking at old seeds down a microscope, Penny tries to make new seeds grow.

Nick Overton

Nick is a post-doctoral research associate on Project Time, based at the University of Manchester, where he was previously Lecturer in Archaeological Practice. He is a zooarchaeologist, and his research focuses on examining the relationships between humans and animals in the past through analysis of animal remains. He has worked in the commercial archaeology sector, and on research excavations in Britain, Europe and the Middle East, and he now co-directs excavations at No Name Hill, a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer site in Yorkshire, and is part of the directorial team excavating at Dorstone Hill, a 4th millennia monumental complex in Herefordshire (directed by Julian Thomas and Keith Ray). He also co-directs the Prehistory to Primary School project at the University of Manchester, which develops and delivers teaching resources to primary schools in the local community. When not doing archaeology, you might find Nick bird watching, listening to folk music, or playing the banjo.

Organisations that we are working with

  • Ashmolean Museum
  • Bangor Museum
  • Department of the Communities Northern Ireland
  • Down Farm Museum
  • Great North Museum
  • Headland Archaeology
  • Historic England
  • Historic Environment Scotland
  • National Monuments Service Ireland
  • National Museum of Ireland
  • National Museum Scotland
  • Norfolk Museums Service
  • Powysland Museum
  • Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments Wales
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