British Museum Society of Antiquaries Appointment
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has appointed Professor Chris Gosden as the Society of Antiquaries trustee of the British Museum for a period of 4 years commencing 2 August 2018.
Chris Gosden undertook his doctorate on the Iron Age of central Europe, before moving to Australia and held a post-doc at the Australian National University and then his first lecturing job at La Trobe.
For the last 24 years he has been in Oxford, first as a curator-lecturer at the Pitt Rivers Museum and then as Professor of European Archaeology. He has carried out archaeological fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Borneo, Turkmenistan and Britain, among other places.
He is currently setting up a fieldwork project in Siberia.
While at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, he worked on the history of collections and their relevance to post-colonial relations and identity, including two large projects - Relational Museum Project and a follow-up project on the English collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum called The Other Within.
More recently he has run research projects on the history of the English landscape from the Bronze Age to the Domesday Book in the early middle ages and on Celtic art both in Britain and in Europe including Eurasian links. He is writing a book on the long-term history of magic. He is a trustee of the Art Fund and a fellow of a number of learned societies, including the British Academy.
The role is not remunerated. Under the Governance Code for Public Appointments, any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years must be declared. This is defined as including holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation, or candidature for election. Chris has declared no such political activity.