Expert speakers

Mr Tom Abbott

Specialist in architectural history from the Baroque to the 20th century with a wide knowledge of the performing arts. He graduated in Psychology and Art History from Carleton College, Minnesota and studied at the Louvre School of Art History in Paris. Since 1987 he has lived in Berlin and has organised and led many academic tours in Germany. Tom has a particular interest in the German and American architectural and artistic modern including the Bauhaus and Expressionism.

Dr Matthew J. Adams

Director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He received his PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in Near Eastern History, Archaeology and Egyptology. He is currently directing excavations of several sites in Israel and Palestine, primarily at Megiddo (Biblical Armageddon), Legio (the base of the Roman VIth Ferrata Legion), and at Solomon's Pools near Bethlehem (the water source of Jerusalem for the last 2,000 years).

Professor Robert Adelson

Professor of Music History and Organology at the Conservatoire de Nice. From 2005–16 he curated France's second-largest collection of historical musical instruments in the Musée du Palais Lascaris. He has published widely; his latest book is Erard; A Passion for the Piano (Oxford, 2021). Website: robertadelson.wordpress.com

Ms Louisa Allen

Louisa Allen is a horticulturist and garden designer. She worked for the City of London Corporation from 2012-2017, managing 200 modern and historic green spaces in the Square Mile, where notable recent projects included commissioning Professor Nigel Dunnett’s landmark planting scheme on the Barbican Estate, re-landscaping St Dunstan in the East and renovating Postman’s Park. She completed a Masters in Horticulture with the Royal Horticultural Society in 2016. Her particular interest is urban environments and the impact these can have on well-being and engaging communities.

Dr John Allison

Editor of Opera magazine and music critic. He was born in South Africa and completed his PhD degree while playing the piano and working as assistant organist at Cape Town cathedral. Since moving to London in 1989 he has written for publications around the world, authored two books and served on the juries of many international competitions. He co-founded the International Opera Awards in 2013. He reviews for the Daily Telegraph and has previously held positions as music critic on The Sunday Telegraph and The Times.

Dr Meri Arichi

Lecturer and Senior Teaching Fellow in the History of Japanese Art at SOAS. She studied in London and Florence, and worked at Christie’s, London in the 1990s. Returning to academia, she completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Asian Art, an MA in History of East Asian Art, and a PhD in Japanese Art at SOAS. She has run courses at Birkbeck College, the V&A, British Museum, and the Courtauld Institute of Art Summer School.

Mr Patrick Bade

Historian, writer and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld and was senior lecturer at Christies Education for many years. He has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery, V&A. He has published on 19th- and early 20th-century painting and on historical vocal recordings. His latest book is Music Wars: 1937–1945.

Dr Paul Bahn

Archaeologist and Britain’s foremost specialist in prehistoric art. He obtained his PhD at Cambridge and is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a corresponding member of the Archaeological Institute of America. He led the team which discovered Britain’s only known Ice Age cave art at Creswell in 2003 and his books include Prehistoric Rock Art, Journey Through the Ice Age and Images of the Ice Age, which won Archaeology Book of the Year in the Current Archaeology Awards for 2017. His latest book is Everyday Life in the Ice Age, a new study of our ancestors (2022), co-authored with Elle Clifford.

Mr Christopher Baker

Christopher Baker is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. He was until recently Director of European and Scottish Art and Portraiture at the National Galleries of Scotland, responsible for the collections at both the National Gallery and Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. He previously worked at Christ Church, Oxford, and the National Gallery in London. Christopher has curated numerous exhibitions of British and European art in the UK and internationally. His publications include J.M.W. Turner: The Vaughan Bequest (2019), Landseer: The Monarch of the Glen (2017), the Catalogue of English Drawings and Watercolours, National Gallery of Scotland (2011) and The National Gallery [London] Complete Illustrated Catalogue (1995).

Professor Amira Bennison

Professor in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Magdalene College. Amira’s publications include The Almoravid and Almohad Empires (2016), The Great Caliphs (2009) and Jihad & its Interpretations in Precolonial Morocco (2002) as well as numerous articles on the political, social and cultural history of the Islamic western Mediterranean.

Dr David Beresford-Jones

Affiliated Scholar of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. For over two decades he has directed archaeological investigations on the south coast of Peru. He has interests in the origins of agriculture, Pre-Colombian textiles and the synthesis of archaeology and other disciplines, particularly linguistics. He is the author of The Lost Woodlands of Ancient Nasca, the co-editor of Archaeology & Language in the Andes and Rethinking the Andes-Amazonia Divide and over 60 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and books.

Mr Raaja Bhasin

Award winning author, historian and journalist. He has published 15 books of history, travel, fiction and poetry and is a recognised authority on the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and its capital, Shimla. He has handled assignments for television, including for the BBC, and for the Indian Institute of Advanced Study and various departments of the Indian Government. He writes regularly for magazines and papers in India and elsewhere. He is the state Co-convenor of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. 

Dr Flavio Boggi

Art historian specialising in mediaeval and Renaissance Italian art. He trained both in Scotland and Italy and is now head of the department of Art History at University College Cork, Ireland. He has published widely on the artistic culture of Tuscany. He is also interested in Emilian painting and has co-written two books on the Bolognese artist Lippo di Dalmasio.

Ms Monica Bohm-Duchen

Lecturer, writer and curator specialising in 20th-century art. She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before graduating in English Literature and History of Art from UCL, and with an MA in Art History from the Courtauld. She has lectured for the National Gallery, Tate, Royal Academy, Courtauld, Sotheby’s and Birkbeck College. She is contributing editor of Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (Lund Humphries, 2019), which accompanies the year-long nationwide Insiders/Outsiders Festival, she initiated in 2019.

Dr Zahira Véliz Bomford

Dr Zahira Bomford. Independent art historian and art conservator, former Senior Conservator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She completed her PhD at the Courtauld, where she has also lectured, in addition to Rice University, Houston, UCL and the V&A. She has worked in conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Prado and the National Trust and has published extensively on Spanish art. In 2022 she was recognised by the College Art Association in America with a Lifetime Achievement award and also published a book with the Getty Conservation Institute on Franz Kline.

Dr Meg Boulton

Meg Boulton PhD, FRSA, has held the post of Teaching Fellow in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and is a lecturer on the medieval History of Art courses for the V&A online Academy. She has studied and taught at the universities of York and Leeds, and has published on a range of topics including medieval art, architecture, sculpture and theories of space. Her monograph is entitled Set in Stone: Phenomenologies of early medieval sculpture in England.

Dr Bruno Bower

(FRSA, FHEA) is a musicologist, oboist, composer, and music editor, with research specialisms in Victorian print culture and operetta. He has written and presented on subjects as diverse as Gilbert and Sullivan, John Cage, and Victorian polymaths, and he is the General Editor for critical editions of music by Peter Gellhorn and Norman O’Neill. He currently teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and runs adult courses in classical music and opera for Imperial College London and for a range of private institutions across London.

Dr Xavier Bray

Art historian specialising in Spanish art and sculpture and Director of the Wallace Collection, London. Formerly Chief Curator of Dulwich Picture Gallery and Assistant Curator of 17th and 18th-century European paintings at the National Gallery. His exhibitions include Murillo & Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship and Goya: The Portraits. He completed his PhD at Trinity College, Dublin. Twitter: @XBray | Instagram: @xabibray

Dr Steven Brindle

Read History at Oxford and worked for English Heritage for 34 years. He was also involved in the post-fire restoration of Windsor Castle, 1993–7. Publications include Brunel, the Man who built the World (2006), Windsor Castle: A Thousand Years of A Royal Palace (2018) and and Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530-1830 (2023). Twitter: @StevenPBrindle

Professor Dominic Parviz Brookshaw

Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College. He holds a BA in Arabic with Persian from Oxford, and a DPhil in premodern Persian poetry, also from Oxford. Before returning to Oxford in 2013, Dominic taught Persian literature and language at Stanford University, Manchester University, and McGill University. Dominic has travelled widely in Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Arab Middle East, and has previously led tours for Martin Randall to both Uzbekistan and Iran.

Professor John Bryan

Emeritus professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield, and a practising musician, he is a member of the Rose Consort of Viols and has performed with Musica Antiqua. An artistic adviser to York Early Music Festival, he founded the North East Early Music Forum, is chair of the Viola da Gamba Society and has been guest conductor of York Opera and The Academy of St Olave's. His book Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers and Music was published by Routledge in 2016. He has lectured on several previous Martin Randall Festivals.

Dr Chris Callow

Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. He first studied in Iceland in the mid 1990s and has been going back regularly ever since. He followed his BA degree in Medieval Studies with a year studying Modern Icelandic in Iceland and then completing a PhD on medieval Icelandic history. The PhD contributed to his book, Landscape, Tradition and Power in Medieval Iceland (Brill). He has written several articles on topics related to early Iceland including on stories about female settlers, children and childhood, and the Black Death. He is currently writing a book on the way people in Iceland have thought about slavery over the centuries. Dr Callow’s research reflects his interdisciplinary interests. He has used sagas, laws, varied forms of archaeology, and place-names to try to understand both the realities of early Icelandic society and the way later people thought about it.

Ms Sophie Campbell

A travel writer since 1991, Sophie has written for the Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller among many others. She also lectures on travel writing and is a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Her book on the traditional events of the summer, The Season: A Summer Whirl Through the English Social Season was published in 2013. Twitter: @aguidetolondon | Instagram: @aguidetolondon | Website: sophiecampbell.london

Dr Katie Campbell

Writer, garden historian and lecturer. She has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham Universities, writes for various publications and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, British Gardens in Time, accompanied a BBC TV series. Other books include Paradise of Exiles, Icons of 20th-century Landscape Design and Policies & Pleasances: A Guide to Scotland’s Gardens. She is currently working on a book about how the Medici Villas reflect the changing ideas of the Renaissance.

Professor Cathie Carmichael

Historian specialising in Eastern Europe, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia. She studied International History at the London School of Economics, Ethnology at the University of Ljubljana, and European Studies at the University of Bradford. She is the editor of the Journal of Genocide Research and the author of Genocide before the Holocaust.

Ms Katherine Carter

Curator and Historian, specialising in early 20th century political history. As Curator of Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill, Katherine leads the research, presentation, interpretation and conservation of the house and collections. Her exhibitions include ‘Death of a Hero’, ‘Into the Trenches’ and ‘Churchill & The Crown’. Elected a Churchill Fellow by Westminster College, Missouri and America’s National Churchill Museum, she is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She speaks on the subject of Winston Churchill internationally, advises film and television productions, and appears frequently in print and broadcast media. Her first book, Churchill, Chartwell and the Countdown to War will be published by Yale University Press in 2024.

Ms Cynthia Chaplin

A professional sommelier and Vinitaly International Academy certified Italian Wine Ambassador. Born in the USA, Cynthia moved to Europe in 1990 and subsequently lived in Spain, Belgium, England and Italy. It was here that she settled, centring her career in the Italian food and wine sector. A member of Le Donne del Vino and a Professor of Italian wine and culture, she is a regular judge for wine and sake competitions and also consults with restaurants and wine shops, developing comprehensive wine lists and excellent food pairings. 

Professor Harry Charrington

Architect and Head of the School of Architecture & Cities at the University of Westminster. He read Architecture at Cambridge, where he was the founding editor of Scroope: Cambridge Architectural Journal, and subsequently combined academia and practice in both England and Finland. He has a particular interest in the history of modernism and obtained his PhD from the LSE on Alvar Aalto. His books include the award-winning Alvar Aalto: the Mark of the Hand and contributions to Artek and the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World (Yale University Press).

Dr Kevin Childs

Writer and lecturer on culture and the arts with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. He studied English Language and Literature at Oxford University followed by postgraduate studies at the Courtauld. He has held fellowships at the Dutch Institute in Florence and the British School in Rome. He blogs regularly for Huffington Post and has published articles and reviews in The New Statesman and Courtauld Reviews. He is currently working on a book looking at the development of the concept of autonomous style in the visual arts. Twitter: @KevinChilds101 | Website: kevinchilds.net

Ms Felicity Cobbing

Executive and Curator of the Palestine Exploration Fund in London. She has excavated in Jordan with the British Museum, and worked throughout the Middle East, particularly Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Widely published on the archaeology and the history of archaeology in the Levant, she is co-author with Dr Raouf Sa’d Abujaber of Beyond the River – Ottoman Transjordan in Original Photographs, and with David M. Jacobson on Distant Views of the Holy Land. Twitter: @FelicityCobbing

Dr R. T. Cobianchi

Art historian and researcher specializing in Italian art and architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque. His interests also span from the iconography of the late Middle Ages to the sculpture of Neoclassicism.

Mr Ian Colvin

Historian and Byzantinist specialising in Late Antiquity and the South Caucasus, with interests in the wider history of the region. Trained at Oxford, he is now a researcher at the University of Cambridge. He has directed an ongoing archaeological expedition to ancient Archaeopolis in the South Caucasus since 2001, and leads a number of tours in the region.

Professor Donal Cooper

Professor of Italian and Mediterranean Art at the University of Cambridge; over more than 25 years he has published widely on art and architecture in medieval Italy with a particular focus on Giotto and the patronage of the Franciscan Order. His co-authored book with Janet Robson on the fresco decoration of the Upper Church, The Making of Assisi (Yale University Press), won the Art Book Prize in 2014. He is currently contributing to major exhibitions on Sienese Art (National Gallery, London) and Cimabue (Musée du Louvre). During his career he has lived and worked extensively in Italy, Florence, Perugia, Rome and Venice.

Mrs Imogen Corrigan

Specialist in Anglo-Saxon and mediaeval history. She spent 20 years in the army, retiring in the rank of Major, then obtained a first-class degree in Medieval History from the University of Kent, and has been studying and lecturing ever since. She is the author of Stone on Stone: the Men who Built the Cathedrals (Crowood Press/Robert Hale, 2019). Website: medieval-lecture.com

Dr Carlo Corsato

Art historian and lecturer specialising in early-modern art and architecture in Italy and Flanders. He obtained his PhD from the University of Verona on 16th-century painting in Venice and the Veneto. He has lectured and given talks at a number of institutions, including Morley College, the Courtauld Institute, and the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Buckingham. He was visiting scholar at the Dutch Institute in Florence and St John’s College, Cambridge. He has contributed to international scholarly journals and exhibition catalogues, and co-edited the first completed monograph on the church of Frari, Venice.

Ms Rosemary Crill

Recently retired as Senior Curator for South Asia at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where she is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow. Over some 30 years she has published widely on Indian textiles and paintings and has travelled frequently to India. Her books include Indian Embroidery, Indian Ikat Textiles, Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West and most recently The Fabric of India, which accompanied the major exhibition of the same name at the V&A in 2015-16.

Mr Colin Crosbie

A widely-travelled plantsman with a keen interest in garden design, Colin studied horticulture at the West of Scotland Agricultural College and worked in the Savill and Valley gardens in Windsor Great Park. He was then appointed head gardener to the Queen Mother at Royal Lodge before moving to the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley where he became curator of the gardens. Colin returned to Dumfries and Galloway in 2015 to run his own horticultural consultancy. He also leads garden tours in the UK and internationally and has appeared on radio and television.

Professor John Darlington

Director of Projects, World Monument Fund, Britain. An archaeologist and author, he joined WMF in 2015 to head the British affiliate. He previously led projects for the National Trust focused on historic mansions, gardens and landscapes across North West England. He also served as County Archaeologist for Lancashire, and is a specialist in medieval towns and landscapes, castles and abbeys. John is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, and a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales Trinity St David.

Dr James Davey

Holding degrees from King’s College London and the University of Oxford, he completed his PhD at the University of Greenwich in 2010. From 2011 to 2017 he was a curator at the National Maritime Museum, employed across a range of projects. During this time he was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and held honorary fellowships at University College London and the University of Leicester. He currently lectures in Naval and Maritime History at the University of Exeter.

Dr Hugh Doherty

Lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia. He was taught at the Universities of London, Cambridge, and Oxford, and was a research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He specialises in the period, 700–1200, and publishes on western kings, secular élites and their records. He is a keen believer in the value of exploring and understanding the architectural fabric, material culture and landscapes of the past.

Dr Michael Douglas-Scott

Dr Michael Douglas-Scott mixes scholarship with accessible discourse, with reasoned opinion, and is highly sought-after as an art history lecturer. He has lectured for New York University (London campus) and Birkbeck College, University of London, specialising primarily in 16th-century Italian art and architecture. He studied at the Courtauld and Birkbeck College and lived in Rome for several years. He has written articles for Arte Veneta, Burlington Magazine and the Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes.

Dr Michael Downes

Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, musical director of St Andrews Chorus, Scotland’s largest choral society, and founding artistic director of Byre Opera. He has lectured for most of the UK’s leading opera companies and writes programme notes for Wigmore Hall and Aldeburgh Music. Publications include books written with and about contemporary British composer Jonathan Harvey, and a collaboration with Nike Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard. Story of the Century, his new book on Wagner’s Ring, was published in November 2024 by Faber and Faber; his next project is a biography of Elgar, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Professor Jane Downes

Director of the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, based at Orkney College UHI. She is a specialist in later prehistory in Scotland, and more specifically in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Orkney. She has led fieldwork programmes and published extensively on this topic, including excavations at the Ring of Brodgar, Cata Sand on Sanday, at the Knowes of Trotty, and the Heart of Neolithic Orkney widescale survey. She is also an acknowledged expert on climate change and archaeological heritage.

Dr Paul Max Edlin

Composer, Artistic Director, Performer. Paul has taught in universities for over 30 years, most recently as a professor and then as Director of Music at Queen Mary University of London. He has been Artistic Director of both Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival and Deal Music and Arts. He was also Director of International Composer Pyramid, which has supported some of the world’s finest young composers at the start of their careers.

His music, encompassing ballet, orchestral to chamber and instrumental to electronic, has been composed for and performed by some of the world’s finest musicians and ensembles.

He is a trustee of several arts charities, including Ora Singers, City Music Foundation, Cantoris Charitable Trust and China-UK International Music Festival. In 2022 he moved permanently to Tuscany so he could concentrate on his work as a composer.

Professor Katharine Ellis

Professor of Music at Cambridge and was educated at Oxford University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. A cultural historian of musical France in the 19th and 20th centuries, she is a prizewinning author interested in the musical lives experienced by amateurs and professionals during an especially turbulent period of French history. Her publications focus on subjects including music criticism, the early music revival, cultural politics, and tensions between Paris and the French provinces.

Mr Ben Evans

Editor of HALI magazine – the world’s leading specialist magazine dedicated to antique carpets and textiles. He has extensive travel experience and his strong relations with scholars and curators support a comprehensive knowledge of world weavings.

Dr Karen Exell

Studied at Oxford University and St Andrews, before obtaining a PhD from Durham University. She directed the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar from 2011–15, where she is currently Honorary Senior Research Associate. She is also a consultant at Qatar Museums, developing the new National Museum designed by Jean Nouvel. Recent publications include Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula: Debates, Discourses & Practices and Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices & Regional Processes. Her monograph, Modernity & the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula was published in April 2016. Instagram: @karenexell

Dr Patricia Fara

Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and historian of science. She was President of the British Society for the History of Science from 2016 to 2018. She is currently President of the Antiquarian Horological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the recipient of the 2022 Abraham Pais award of the American Physical Society. Her prize-winning Science: A Four Thousand Year History (2009) has been translated into nine languages. Her other highly acclaimed books include Life after Gravity: Isaac Newton’s London Career (2021) and A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage in The First World War (2018).

Dr Nicholas Flory

Nicholas Flory. Art historian and curator. He is currently Simon Sainsbury Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery. Nicholas obtained his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2022, aspects of which will shortly be published as essays in edited volumes. He has taught widely on late medieval art at the Courtauld, with a particular focus on the artistic production of the southern Netherlands during the 15th century. He previously worked at Christie’s auction house as a Consultant to the Old Master Paintings department, writing and researching paintings for auction and private sale.

Dr Margrethe Floryan

Art historian with a PhD in garden history, and curator at the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen. She studied at the University of Aarhus and at the École du Louvre in Paris and lived with her family in Moscow and Berlin carrying out pioneering garden historical research. The author of Gardens of the Tsars: An Analysis of the Aesthetics, Semantics and Uses of Late 18th Century Russian Gardens and co-author of Great European Gardens: An Atlas of Historic Plans. She is active in safeguarding and listing historical Danish gardens, and serves on the Danish World Heritage Committee.

Professor Frances Fowle

Senior Curator of French Art at the Scottish National Gallery and Reader in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a Trustee of the Burrell Collection and has curated several major exhibitions at the National Gallery of Scotland, including Impressionism & Scotland, Van Gogh & Britain and in 2014 American Impressionism. Her publications include Monet & French Landscape: Vetheuil & Normandy, Impressionism, Urbanism Environment, Van Gogh’s Twin: The Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid and Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880–1910. Twitter: @FrancesFowle

Mr Andrew Foyle

Architectural and social historian specialising in British buildings of the 17th to 19th centuries. He grew up in Wells and then Bath, graduated from the University of Bristol and completed a Masters degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art. After working for Bristol Museum he wrote the Pevsner City Guide to Bristol (2004) and the Buildings of England: Somerset North (2011). He works as a heritage consultant, teaches art and architectural history, and has led seminars and walks for various institutions.

Ms Lucia Gahlin

A Research Associate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, and freelance lecturer. She has lectured for the Universities of London, Reading, Surrey, Sussex, Exeter, Bristol and Warwick. She works closely with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and has been Small Finds Registrar on excavations at Amarna in Egypt. Her publications include Egypt: Gods, Myths & Religion.

Dr Jana Gajdošová

A medieval art specialist at Sam Fogg Limited, Jana teaches on a variety of courses for the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Since completing her PhD in 2015, she has published in GESTA, The Burlington Magazine, the JBAA, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, and Speculum on variety of topics including experimentation in medieval buildings, Gothic sculpture, memory and architecture, and medieval bridges. She is the newly appointed director of the British Archaeological Association and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Dr Alexandra Gajewski

Specialist in mediaeval architecture. She read Art History at Münster University, Germany, followed by a PhD in Gothic architecture in northern Burgundy from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has lectured at the Courtauld, at Birkbeck College and at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has just completed a European project at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales in Madrid, where she was part of a research team investigating ‘The Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture’. She is Deputy Editor of the Burlington Magazine. Twitter: @AKMGajewski | Instagram: @akmgajewski

Mr Christopher Garibaldi

Christopher Garibaldi is an independent researcher and academic. From 2010 to 2019 he was Director of Palace House, Newmarket (the National Horseracing Museum). He was previously Co-Director of the Attingham Summer School for the Study of Historic Houses and Collections. Earlier in his career he was Assistant Keeper of Art (Decorative Art) at Norwich Castle Museum. In the 1990s, he worked for the Royal Collection cataloguing the silver at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and other royal residences. He recently completed an MPhil in the History of Art and Architecture at St John’s College, Cambridge where he is currently studying for his PhD on aspects of the history of royal patronage.

Mr Martin Gayford

Studied philosophy at Cambridge, and art history at the Courtauld Institute. He has written prolifically about art and jazz, contributing regularly to the Daily Telegraph and also to many art magazines and exhibition catalogues. His biography of Michelangelo, published in 2013, was met with critical acclaim. Twitter: @MartinGayford | Website: martingayford.co.uk

Ms Julie Gibson

Recently retired from the post of County Archaeologist for the Orkney Islands, which she held for many years, Julie maintains an up-to-date overview of the archaeology of the archipelago. Arriving as a student to help excavate a Pictish and Viking cemetery in Rousay (now her home) her continued love for Viking and later archaeology has driven her participation in several North Atlantic and Scandinavian programmes. She has a great interest in the archaeology of coasts and islands and climate-driven coastal erosion and is the author of a popular book on the effects on Orkney’s heritage.

Dr Garth Gilmour

Jerusalem and Oxford trained biblical archaeologist, now living and working in Jerusalem. He has excavated at a number of sites in Israel and Cyprus, most notably in the Philistine capital cities of Ekron and Ashkelon. His interests include eastern Mediterranean trade in the Late Bronze Age and the archaeology of religion in ancient Israel, and he is currently preparing for publication the Palestine Exploration Fund’s excavation in Jerusalem in the 1920s.

Dr Agata Gomólka

Art historian, lecturer and researcher specialising in Romanesque architectural sculpture. She obtained her MA at the University of Warwick and her PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include medieval art and architecture, pre-modern building methods, sculptural techniques, and representation of the human body in art. She is an editor of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, and an apprentice stonemason. 

Dr Mark Grahame

Archaeologist, lecturer and Member of the Chartered Institute of Archaeologists (MCIfA). He obtained his PhD from Southampton University and his thesis on the spatial layouts of the houses of Roman Pompeii was published as a British Archaeological Report and a series of journal articles. He has coordinated an adult education programme in archaeology at the University of Southampton (2002–2011) and has taught courses on the archaeology and history of the Roman Empire for Cambridge and Oxford Universities' Institutes of Continuing Education. He is currently the director of the heritage consultancy, M-Arc Heritage Ltd., a company which he founded in 2018. Twitter: @RomanAgent

Mr Hermann Grampp

Dr Jamie Greenbaum

Historian specialising in Ming dynasty cultural history and resident in Beijing since 2004. He is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. He is also involved with Renmin University in Beijing, teaching and mentoring post-graduate students. In this period he has published two books; one on the late-Ming literary world, and the other a translation and commentary on the final writings of an early twentieth-century Chinese political figure. He is currently working on an annotated translation of a 17th century literary compilation.

Dr Katy Hamilton

Writer and broadcaster, she has provided talks for, amongst others, Wigmore Hall, BBC Proms and the Oxford Lieder Festival. A frequent contributor to BBC Radio 3, Katy’s specialism is the music of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and she is the editor of Brahms in the Home and Concert Hall (2014) and Brahms in Context (2019). Katy has taught at the Royal College of Music, City Lit, and the Universities of Nottingham and Middlesex.

Dr Christina Hatzimichael-Whitley

Lecturer at Cardiff University specialising in the Aegean Bronze Age. Born in Greece, she has travelled extensively in the Aegean and excavated in both Greece and Cyprus. Her teaching at Cardiff includes Greek art and archaeology from the Bronze Age through the Classical to the Byzantine period, and Modern Greek. She holds degrees in art and archaeology from Thessaloniki (BA), Toronto (MA) and Cambridge (PhD). She is assistant director of the Praisos Project in eastern Crete, which has included a systematic survey and excavation of the Classical city of Praisos. 

Dr Sophie Hay

Roman archaeologist. While at the British School at Rome, she worked on the ‘Insula I.9 Pompeii Project’ directed by Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, which sought to understand daily life in an insula of Roman houses through excavation and archival research. After more than a decade of working for the University of Southampton as an archaeological geophysicist conducting surveys across the Mediterranean, she returned to her first passion, Pompeii, and, in collaboration with the Cambridge Schools Classics Project, worked with the University of Cambridge to bring the stories unearthed in her excavations in Pompeii into the classroom. She currently works for the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in their Press and Communications Office, and has recently appeared in a number of history documentaries for television as an expert in Pompeian urban life.

Dr Dana Healy

Senior lecturer in Vietnamese studies at SOAS, University of London. Dana specializes in modern Vietnamese cultural studies, including literature, film, religion and gender. She studied Vietnamese Studies at Charles University in Prague, where she also completed her PhD. She first visited Vietnam as a student in 1983 and has been engaged in teaching and research relating to the country ever since. Her academic work embraces a broad spectrum of topics: she lectures on Vietnamese language, literature and culture and has published widely on modern and contemporary literature and cinema, literary representation of war, gender and the Vietnamese diaspora.

Mr Gijs van Hensbergen

Art historian and author specialising in Spain and the USA. His books include The Sagrada Familia (2017), Gaudí, In the Kitchens of Castile and Guernica and he has published in the Burlington Magazine and Wall Street Journal. He read languages at Utrecht University and Art History at the Courtauld, and undertook postgraduate studies in American art of the 1960s. He has worked in England, the USA and Spain as exhibitions organiser, TV researcher and critic and is a Fellow of the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE. Twitter: @GvanHensbergen | Website: gijsvanhensbergen.com

Dr Monika Hinkel

Lecturer and curator in the field of Japanese art, specialising in Japanese woodblock prints. She is a Research Associate of the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, University of London. She studied Japanese Studies at Bonn University. She was curator for Japanese art at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne and spent three years as a guest researcher at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. She has lectured at SOAS, Birkbeck, the V&A and Morley College.

Ms Martina Hinks-Edwards

Martina Hinks-Edwards studied English at Charles University, Prague. She began working for MRT while still studying, firstly as an interpreter for groups visiting the Czech Republic, and from 2004 as a tour leader with a wide breadth of knowledge of the country’s cultural history. She has led tours throughout the Czech Republic and has a particular interest in 20th-century Czech history and architecture. The countless accolades she has received over the years from her clients, is a reflection of her energy and enthusiasm for the job.

Mr William Howard

William Howard’s distinguished career as soloist and founder/pianist of the Schubert Ensemble has taken him to over 40 different countries. He has performed regularly at major UK festivals and London venues, including Wigmore Hall and Kings Place, and can be heard on more than 40 CD recordings. He has lectured for MRT in Warsaw and Bologna.

Ms Katja Hoyer

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her essays have featured in History Today and BBC History Extra. Katja writes for The Washington Post, The Spectator, Die Welt and other newspapers on current political affairs in Germany and Europe. She is the author of the bestselling Blood and Iron – The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918.  

Ms Ulrica Häller

Art historian specialising in the decorative arts, antiques and cultural history in Sweden in the 17th and 18th centuries. She has over twenty years experience as a Museum Educator at the Royal Palaces in Stockholm and also lectures at the Stockholms Auktionsverk, the oldest auction house in Northern Europe. She has lectured internationally and contributed to several French publications and television emissions on the topics of Bernadotte, Rosendal, and the French empire style in Sweden.

Dr Pasquale Iannone

Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD from Edinburgh, where he has taught various courses in film history and theory as well as literature and music since 2005. He has published widely on Italian cinema, including several articles exploring Rome on Film. He is an experienced critic and broadcaster, regularly contributing to BBC Radio and Sight & Sound magazine. He is also the Director of the Italian Film Festival in Scotland.

Professor John Irving

Musicologist, pianist and harpsichordist. He is Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and was previously Professor of Music at the Universities of London and Bristol, and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. He has written six books on Mozart, including the award-winning The Mozart Project, and has made numerous acclaimed recordings. Twitter: @denotejohn | Website: johnirvingfortepianist.wordpress.com

Prof Neil Jackson

Architect and architectural historian. He is Charles Reilly Professor of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, and former resident scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute. Publications include The Modern Steel House and California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood. His most recent books, published in 2019, are Pierre Koenig: a View from the Archive and Japan and the West: An Architectural Dialogue.

Mr James Johnstone

Organist specialising in the Baroque. He is Professor of early keyboards at Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. He has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with the Gabrieli Consort & Players and Florilegium. He re-formed the chamber group Trio Sonnerie and recorded the Bach Motets on the historic organ in Naumburg with Trinity Baroque. Twitter: @jamesjhpd | Website: jamesjohnstone.org

Dr Dan Jolowicz

Associate Professor and Fellow in Classics at Christ Church, University of Oxford and specialist in the culture of the Greeks and Romans of the Imperial period. Has travelled extensively through the Mediterranean region and its Graeco-Roman sites. His recent book, Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels (Oxford), explores the cultural dynamism and interaction between Greece and Rome during this period, and he has written a number of academic articles on how the Greek world processes the reality of the Roman empire. Holds degrees (BA, MSt, DPhil) from the University of Oxford and has held lecturing and research positions at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Mr David Jones

Furniture historian specialising in English and Scottish furniture and Thomas Chippendale. He has taught for the greater part of his career at the University of St Andrews, but most recently at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. He advises on several collections of historic furniture in Scotland including Hopetoun House; Dumfries House, where he is Hon, Keeper of Furniture; and Paxton House, where he is Research Fellow; and uses these collections for teaching on site.

Dr Sue Jones

Specialist in Netherlandish art between the 14^th and 16^th centuries. She was Assistant Curator at the National Gallery in London, a Fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago, and she has taught widely in both the US and the UK. In recent years, she was a member of the ‘Verona’ project at the KIK-IRPA in Brussels, which published a new technical imaging of Jan van Eyck’s paintings. She has also published extensively on Van Eyck and is a co-author of Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection. 

Dr Philippa Joseph

An art, architectural, and design historian whose research covers artistic and cultural exchange across Europe, especially between Andalucía and Sicily, and the wider Mediterranean basin. Philippa also has an academic interest in, and teaches on, 20th-century Italian architecture and design, about which she is currently writing a book for Reaktion Books. She is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, a tutor at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, and is a member of the editorial advisory board for History Today.

Dr Shona Kallestrup

A lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, Dr Kallestrup is a specialist in turn-of-the-century art and architecture. Trained at St Andrews and the Warburg Institute, she has also worked at the Universities of Aberdeen and Copenhagen and, from 2018–21, was a Senior Research Fellow at New Europe College in Bucharest. She has published widely on national identity construction in the 19^th and 20^th centuries: her books include Art and Design in Romania 1866-1927: local and international aspects of the search for national expression (2006) and the edited volumes Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe (2022) and Nordic Design in Translation: the circulation of objects, ideas and practices (2023).

Dr Zena Kamash

Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology and Art at Royal Holloway, University of London and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. An expert in the heritage and archaeology of the Roman world, in particular the Middle East, Britain and North Africa, she has published widely on a range of topics including water technologies, religion, food, memory and post-conflict reconstruction. She is currently leading a British Academy-funded project on ‘Crafting Heritage for Wellbeing in Iraq’, which builds on her previous project, ‘Remembering the Romans in the Middle East and North Africa’. Her next book, Heritage and Healing in Syria and Iraq, explores alternative, creative approaches to heritage in conflict zones, and will be published by Manchester University Press.

Ms Yoko Kawaguchi

Writer and cultural historian specialising in the relationship between Japan and the West. Brought up in the United States, Canada and Japan, she holds an MA from Kyoto University, and has undertaken postgraduate research at Newnham College, Cambridge. She lectures on Japanese garden history, as well as on the reception of Japanese culture abroad and the perception of Japanese women in the West. Her publications include Butterfly’s Sisters: The Geisha in Western Culture, Japanese Zen Gardens and the recently republished Authentic Japanese Gardens.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon

Managing Director of the Barbican Centre since 2007; former Controller of BBC Radio 3 and Director of the BBC Proms. He has been music critic for The New Yorker and The Observer, music editor of The Listener and editor of Early Music. He is author of the Faber Pocket Guides to Bach and Mozart, and edited Authenticity & Early Music and The City of London: a companion guide. Twitter: @NickRKenyon

Professor Helen King

Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at The Open University and Visiting Professor at the Peninsula Medical and Dental School (Exeter and Plymouth). Her publications include Greek and Roman Medicine and Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology: Uses of a Sixteenth-Century Medical Compendium. She has held research fellowships at Cambridge, Newcastle and in the Netherlands and visiting professorships in the US and Canada. Twitter: @fluff35 | Website: mistakinghistories.wordpress.com

Dr Jarl Kremeier

Art historian specialising in 17th- to 19th-century architecture and decorative arts; teaches Art History at the Berlin College of Acting and the Senior Student’s Department of Berlin’s Freie Universität. He studied at the Universities of Würzburg, Berlin and the Courtauld, is a contributor to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art, author of a book on the Würzburg Residenz, and of articles on Continental Baroque architecture and architectural theory.

Mr Anthony Lambert

Historian, journalist and travel writer. He has worked with and for the National Trust in various capacities for almost 30 years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life and he writes regular profiles of country houses for the Historic Houses Association magazine. He has written numerous travel and guide books, and contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines.

Mr Alastair Learmont

A social and cultural historian, Alastair is currently researching the legacies of slavery within Scottish institutions and editing the letter books of two Border Scots who made their fortunes as doctors and sugar planters in late 18th century Jamaica. Alastair is an experienced lecturer who has devised and presented numerous courses reflecting the diversity of Scotland’s rich cultural heritage. Since 2017 he has been a Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Open Learning at the University of Edinburgh. For the National Galleries of Scotland he has developed Inside Out, a series of talks and walks seeking to contextualise artwork within an immediate geographical setting. Alastair is a Classics graduate and former practising member of the Scottish Bar.

Dr Luca Leoncini

Art historian specialising in 15th-century Italian painting. His first degree and PhD were from Rome University followed by research at the Warburg Institute in London. He has published articles on the classical tradition in Italian art of the 15th century and contributed to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art. He has also written on Mantegna and Renaissance drawings. Instagram: @lucaleonci

Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Chair of Ancient History and Persian Studies at the University of Cardiff and specialist in the history and culture of Iran, the ancient Near East and Greece. He has published widely on Iran, Greece and the history and cultures of the ancient world. Books include Creating a Hellenistic World, King and Court in Ancient Persia, The Culture of Animals in the Ancient World, The Hellenistic Court, Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World and, in 2022, Persians: the Age of the Great Kings. His latest publication is Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther, Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible and his next publication is about the forgotten queens of Egypt. He has contributed to TV documentaries and BBC radio programmes and is a regular reviewer for The Times and Times Higher Education.

Dr Conor Lucey

Architectural historian focused on 18th-century Britain, Ireland and America. He is Assistant Professor of Architectural History in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin, and President of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. His latest book is Building Reputations: Architecture and the Artisan, 1750–1830.

Dr Gerald Luckhurst

Landscape architect and garden historian based in Lisbon with an extensive knowledge of sub-tropical and Mediterranean garden flora. His work involves both historic restoration and contemporary garden design. Books include The Gardens of Madeira, Luigi Manini: Imaginário & Metodo, Sintra: A Landscape with Villas and The Gardens of the National Palace of Queluz. He is currently working on projects in Portugal, the Atlantic Islands, Africa and the Middle East. Twitter: @GeraldLuckhurst

Professor Stephen Darlington MBE

Professor Stephen Darlington MBE is one of the country’s leading choral conductors. From 1985 to 2018 he was Director of Music at Christ Church, Oxford, establishing it as an acknowledged centre of academic musical excellence, and maintained the highest choral traditions of the Church of England in the Cathedral. An extensive discography, comprising over fifty CDs, includes several award-winning recordings. He was awarded an MBE in 2019.

Ms Victoria Daskal MW

Victoria is a wine writer, educator and consultant with over 15 years of industry experience. Born in Moldova and raised in Boston, she studied Economics and Psychology at McGill University. In 2008, she completed the OIV MSc in International Wine Management, visiting 45 wine regions across 23 countries. Founder of an award-winning wine club, Victoria Daskal Wine, she excels in curating global wine selections and hosting educational events. Former Managing Editor of The World of Fine Wine, she now writes for Decanter and other publications, judges in international wine competitions, and lectures at the WSET School in London. Instagram @victoriadaskalwine

Mr Giles MacDonogh

Critically acclaimed historian and author of 15 books, many of them about Germany. These include monographs on Berlin and Prussia and biographies of Frederick the Great and the last Kaiser. His book on post-war Germany, After the Reich, was a best-seller. His latest book is On Germany (Hurst, 2018). He has worked as a teacher and journalist and is a prize-winning translator from French and German. An expert on wine and food, he was a professional wine judge for many years, and Chairman of the Juries for Germany and Austria at the World Wine Awards. He has written four books and numerous articles on wine. Twitter: @GilesMacDonogh | Website: www.macdonogh.co.uk

Mr Freddie Matthews

Freddie Matthews is currently a Cultural Heritage Curator at the National Trust. He was formerly Head of Adult Programmes at the British Museum and Director of Programmes at The Conduit Club in Covent Garden. He has worked at the V&A, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Bagri Foundation, as well as several established art galleries. He is an independent scholar specialising in Buddhist art across Asia, and regularly gives lectures on the subject in the UK and abroad.

Professor Antonio Mazzotta

Curator and scholar, Professor of Art History at the University of Milan, Antonio studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He previously worked as Curatorial Assistant at the National Gallery, where he curated the exhibition Titian’s First Masterpiece: The Flight into Egypt (2012). In 2018-19 he curated an exhibition at the Castello Sforzesco (Milan) exploring the origins of the iconography of Michelangelo’s Pietà (Vesperbild: Alle origini delle Pietà di Michelangelo). In autumn 2023, he is curating an exhibition devoted to young Titian at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice (Tiziano 1508). His main research topics are Venetian and Lombard art of the Renaissance, and the history of collecting.

Dr Richard McClary

Dr Richard Piran McClary is a senior lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York. He received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to the art and architecture of Central Asia. His monograph entitled Medieval Monuments of Central Asia. Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries was published in 2020. He is the author of three monographs and has published articles in numerous journals, including: Muqarnas, Iran, Anatolian Studies, Persica, Iraq, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has served as a trustee and Research Director for the British Institute of Persian Studies and is managing editor of the Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture.

Mr Nigel McGilchrist

Writer and lecturer who lived in Italy for over thirty years, latterly in Orvieto where he produced olive oil and wine. Worked for the Italian Ministry of Arts in the field of wall-painting conservation and has taught at Rome University, the University of Massachusetts and was Dean of European Studies for a consortium of American Universities. For six years he walked every path and village of the sixty inhabited Greek islands which culminated in the twenty volume McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, abbreviated to the Blue Guide to The Aegean Islands. He now lives on the island of Kythera.

Mr John McNeill

Specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education. He is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited and contributed to collections of essays on medieval cloisters, chantries, Anjou, and King’s Lynn and the Fens. In 2010 he established a biennial series of international conferences on Romanesque visual culture. His most recent effort in this field – Romanesque Saints, Shrines, and Pilgrimage – was published in 2020. He is also author of the Blue Guides to both Normandy and the Loire Valley.

Mr Barry Millington

Writer, lecturer and broadcaster specialising in Wagner. He is founder/editor of The Wagner Journal and author of eight books on Wagner including The Wagner Compendium and Richard Wagner: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth. He is Chief Critic for the Evening Standard. He has also acted as dramaturgical adviser at opera houses internationally.

Mr Marc Millon

Wine, food and travel writer. Born in Mexico, he was raised in the USA before studying English Literature at the University of Exeter. Together with his wife, he has pioneered a series of illustrated wine-food-travel books including The Wine and Food of Europe, The Wine Roads of France, The Wine Roads of Italy, The Food Lover’s Companion to France and The Food Lover’s Companion to Italy. He is also the author of The Taste of Britain and lives in Devon, where he is closely involved with the food scene of the West Country. Marc is a certified Vinitaly International Italian Wine Ambassador. His next book, Italy in a Wineglass, will be published in Spring 2024 and tells the story of Italy through its wines. Twitter: @Marc_Millon

Professor Annika Mombauer

Professor of Modern European History at the Open University. Her research interests are 19th- and 20th-century European history, in particular Imperial Germany and the origins of the First World War. She has published widely on German military planning and diplomacy and is a well-known contributor to the historiographical debate on the origins of WWI.

Dr Andrew Moore

Writer, curator, and specialist in the study of country houses and their art collections. Formerly Keeper of Art, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Andrew is a Programme Director for the Attingham Trust, for the study of the English Country House. In partnership with the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, he co-authored a reassessment of Sir Robert Walpole’s art collection at Houghton Hall and is co-author of Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, Rizzoli 2014. He is currently writing a book on the impact of Thomas Coke’s European Grand Tour on Holkham Hall, Norfolk.

Professor Oliver Moore

Oliver Moore is Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has taught at Fudan University, Shanghai, and was a visiting scholar at Beijing University. He was a visiting professor to Kyoto University and taught Art and Material Culture of China at Leiden University. A former Assistant Keeper in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, he has been a part-time China curator at the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden. His research focuses on early and modern art history in China and his most recent book is Photography in China: Science, commerce and communication (Routledge, 2022).

Dr Marc Morris

Historian who specialises in the Middle Ages. He studied and taught at the universities of London and Oxford and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England (2021), as well as The Norman Conquest (2012) and biographies of Edward I and King John. In 2003 he presented the highly acclaimed TV series Castle and wrote its accompanying book. He regularly writes for history magazines and contributes to programmes on radio and television. Twitter: @Longshanks1307 | Website: www.marcmorris.org.uk

Mr Chris Moss

Journalist and writer with a focus on Spain and the cultural history of Argentina. He studied theology, English literature and education, before moving to Argentina in 1991. After returning to the UK he wrote for BBC History, the Daily Telegraph, Time Out and others. He has written and edited several guidebooks, including Eyewitness Travel: Back Roads Spain, a cultural history of Patagonia and a literary compendium for London commuters. He writes on South American music for Songlines and compiles tango albums. Twitter: @Traveloguer

Dr Isabella Nardi

Art historian specialising in South Asia and Indology, in particular the painting traditions and visual cultures of northern India, from the early modern period to the present. She obtained her PhD in Indian Art History at SOAS and is best-known for her books The Theory of Citrasūtras (2006) and Portraits of Devotion (2019). She has worked at several institutions as a visiting professor and research fellow, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sawai Man Singh II Museum in Jaipur, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L’Orientale'.

Ms Aliide Naylor

Journalist, author and editor with a focus on the Baltic states and their neighbours. Her writing has appeared in The Times, New Statesman and The Guardian. Aliide has family in Estonia and she has also lived in St Petersburg and Moscow, where she served as Arts Editor at The Moscow Times. Her book The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front (I.B. Tauris, 2020) explores the Baltics in the 21st century and their relationship with modern Russia.

Professor Fabrizio Nevola

Chair and Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, specialising in urban and architectural history of Early Modern Italy. He obtained his PhD at the Courtauld Institute and has held fellowships at the University of Warwick, the Medici Archive Project, and Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti (Florence). He has published widely including the award-winning Siena: Constructing the Renaissance City.

Mr Christopher Newall

Art historian, lecturer and writer. As well as being a specialist in 19th-century British art, he has a deep interest in Sicily, its architecture and political and social history. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute, he has organised various exhibitions including Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature (Tate Britain 2004) and John Ruskin: Artist & Observer at the National Gallery of Canada and Scottish National Portrait Gallery (2014). His interest in John Ruskin led to our tour Ruskin’s Venice.

Professor Muiris O'Sullivan

Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and former Head of School at the UCD School of Archaeology, Dublin. He has conducted archaeological research at some of the more famous archaeological sites in Ireland, notably Tara, Knowth and Newgrange. Publications include The Mound of the Hostages, Tara, Archaeology 2020 and Tara – From the Past to the Future among many others. Muiris serves on the Board of the Heritage Council of Ireland and on the Comité Scientifique of the Carnac World Heritage Project Paysages de Mégalithes.

Professor John Butt OBE

Lecturer, writer and musician, specialising in historical performance. Professor of Music at Glasgow University, director of the Dunedin Consort, and guest-conductor with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment among others. He was awarded the OBE in 2013.

Dr Sophie Oosterwijk

Researcher and lecturer with degrees in Art History, Medieval Studies and English Literature. She is an expert on the Middle Ages, Netherlandish and Dutch art, with a special interest in portraiture, death and commemoration. She has taught at the universities of Leicester, Manchester and St Andrews, where she is an Honorary Research Fellow. She regularly lectures at Cambridge and the Royal Academy, and is Vice President of the Church Monuments Society. Her many publications include edited volumes on 14th-century sculpture and on the late-medieval Dance of Death.

Dr Zoe Opacic

Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Architecture at Birkbeck College, specialising in medieval art, architecture and urbanism. She received her BA, MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, she edited the Journal of British Archaeological Association (2015–18). She has longstanding family connections with Dalmatia.

Mr Ian Page

Conductor and artistic director of The Mozartists, and is one of the leading Mozart interpreters of his generation. His visionary MOZART 250 project follows the chronological trajectory of the composer’s life, works and influences across 27 years, and his numerous recordings include the first seven releases in a projected complete cycle of the Mozart Operas. Twitter: @IanPageMozart | Website: ianpageconductor.com

Mr Steven Parissien

Lecturer in architectural history at the Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University. Steven has worked as a senior manager and CEO in the heritage, arts and education sectors for over 30 years. His former roles include Deputy Director at Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, Dean of Arts, Humanities and Architecture at the University of Plymouth, and Director/Chief Executive at Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park in Warwickshire. He is the author of Adam Style (1992), George IV: The Grand Entertainment (2001), Interiors: The Home Since 1700 (2008) and The Comfort of the Past: Building Oxford and Beyond 1815–2015 (2015), among others.

Mr Stephen Parkin

Curator of the British Library’s Printed Heritage Collections 1450–1600, and specialist in early printing in Italy. He studied at Cambridge University and University College London, has a qualification in librarianship from the Vatican Library School in Rome, and taught in Italian universities for many years. He has a particular interest in the history of bibliography and collecting and has published in these fields; he also works as a literary translator. He most recently curated the exhibition Aldo Manuzio. Il Rinascimento di Venezia at the Accademia in Venice.

Ms Amanda Patton

Multi-award-winning garden designer, writer, broadcaster and artist. A Registered Member and former Vice-Chair of the Society of Garden Designers, and Member of the Garden Media Guild, she has created Show Gardens at Chelsea and Hampton Court, and has designed over 300 mainly private gardens which have featured in numerous books and national magazines. She lectures widely including at the London College of Garden Design, the RAC and the Lurie Garden in Chicago. Her particular interests are conceptualism within gardens and contemporary garden design. Twitter: @APattonGardens | Website: amandapatton.co.uk

Dr Sarah Pearson

Architectural historian and writer specialising in Italy. Her MA focused on the architecture of Andrea Palladio and her PhD investigated convent building in Northern Italy with particular reference to the Duchy of Urbino and the Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Other interests include Renaissance art and English Brutalist architecture. She has taught at the Universities of Reading and East Anglia, and currently lectures at Madingley Hall at the University of Cambridge.

Mr Anthony Peers

Educated as an architectural historian and trained in building conservation, Anthony works as a consultant providing guidance to those planning the repair, alteration and extension of historic buildings. He has worked with English Heritage’s Listing Division and then with the DTI in Mumbai, where he set up and ran a UNESCO award-winning project to repair George Gilbert Scott’s University buildings whilst training local architects and craftsmen in traditional repair techniques and conservation philosophy. His history reports and conservation guidance has served to inform works at sites such as The Workhouse, Southwell; Aston Hall, Birmingham; The Royal Institution, London; Winchester Cathedral and Birmingham Town Hall. Website: anthonypeers.com

Ms Carolyn Perry

Lecturer and museum consultant. She taught Ancient History and Mythology in the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London and has excavated in Italy. She established the Arab World Education Programme at the British Museum and is a trustee of the International Association for the Study of Arabia. Twitter: @CarolynPPerry | Instagram: @caropperry | Website: carolynperry.blogspot.com

Professor Graham Philip

Works in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, where he specialises in the prehistoric and Bronze Age archaeology of southwest Asia. Before joining Durham in 1994, he worked in Baghdad and then in Amman as Assistant Director of the Council for British Research in the Levant. He has directed field projects in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and currently leads the Durham component of the multi-institutional heritage protection project Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa. Current research interests include landscape archaeology – including the analysis of satellite imagery – and the study of ancient material culture.

Dr Richard Plant

Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the Middle Ages with a strong interest in the modern. He studied at Cambridge, followed by the Courtauld, where he obtained his PhD. He was Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education and has published on English and German architecture.

Mr Gavin Plumley

Writer, broadcaster and lecturer and English-language commissioning editor for the Salzburg Festival. He studied music at Keble College, Oxford and specialises in the culture of Central Europe during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As well as writing for newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide, Gavin has recently lectured at the National Gallery, the British Museum and Wigmore Hall. Twitter: @gavinplumley | Instagram: @gavinplumley | Website: gavinplumley.com

Mr Leslie Primo

Art historian, lecturer and broadcaster. Leslie Primo is a graduate of Birkbeck, University College, London with an MA in Renaissance studies. He has taught courses at Reading University and in London at the Courtauld Institute, the Bishopsgate Institute and Imperial College. He worked at the National Gallery, London, and the National Portrait Gallery for 18 years. He has broadcast for BBC TV and Radio 4 and was a contributor to the Oxford Companion Guide to Black British History and an art history consultant for the Getty publication, Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art. His new book ‘The Foreign Invention of British Art’ is published by Thames & Hudson in 2025. 

Mr Asoka Pugal

Historian and lecturer. Born in Tamil Nadu, he graduated in History from the University of Madras followed by postgraduate studies at Madras Law College. He has been working in the tourist industry for the past 30 years and has worked with Sir Edmund Hillary, and produced a Television Documentary on the Himalayas for German Television. From 1987 to 1992, he was a reporter for ZDF in India and produced the documentary Temples, Palaces & Houses of India. In 2001, he joined the Board of studies in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Madras.

Mr Andreas Puth

Andreas Puth read history and art history at the University of Freiburg and gained his M.A. in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He lectured at UCL, Birkbeck College and the Courtauld on medieval and early modern architecture as well as imagery. Since returning to Germany, he has continued to work as freelance academic editor and translator. For three years, he was also a fellow at the Research Centre on the History and Culture of East Central Europe affiliated to Leipzig University.

Mr Martin Randall

Martin founded the company in 1988 to combine his background and continuing passion for art history and music with what he had learnt from ten years in the travel business. He has a BA (Hons) in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University, and studied aesthetics in the Philosophy Department York University. After a number of temporary and part-time posts in the museum world, and spending a year in both Italy and Germany, he turned to specialist tour operating. He stepped down as Chief Executive in April to take on the new role of Creative Director.

Professor Owen Rees

Professor of Music at the University of Oxford; Fellow and tutor in music at The Queen’s College, Oxford; director of the college chapel choir and the ensemble Contrapunctus. He specialises in Portuguese, Spanish and English sacred music of the 16th and 17th centuries. He has published widely, including studies on the Spanish composers Cristóbal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero and Tomás Luís de Victoria. 

Mr Simon Rees

Simon is a freelance dramaturg, translating opera librettos for singing and surtitles, as well as lecturing and writing on opera, theatre, art and architecture. He is an Associate Lecturer at the Wales International Academy of Voice, and also teaches at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. A novelist, poet and librettist, from 1989 to 2012 he was dramaturg at Welsh National Opera. Website: dramaturg.co.uk

Professor Glenn Richardson

Professor of Early Modern History at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Following doctoral study at the LSE, his work has concentrated on the European Renaissance, on diplomatic and cultural relations between England, France, Venice and the Papacy. His books include: Wolsey (2020), The Field of Cloth of Gold (2013), ‘The Contending Kingdoms’: France and England 1420–1700 (Ashgate, 2008), Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V (London, 2002) and Tudor England and its Neighbours, coedited with Susan Doran (2005). Glenn is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr Jacqueline Riding

Ms Mary Lynn Riley

Resident on the Côte d’Azur and a specialist in 19th- and 20th-century modern and contemporary art. She designs and teaches art courses and art appreciation workshops for adults at the Musée Bonnard in Le Cannet and lectures at other area museums. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, USA and previously worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Ms Juliet Rix

Award–winning journalist, writer and broadcaster with a particular interest in the history of Malta. She studied History of Art at Cambridge and is the author of the Bradt Guide: Malta and Gozo. Her career in journalism has involved working for the BBC and writing for British national newspapers, magazines and online media. Twitter: @julietrix1

Mr Leo Samama

Writer, composer, and co-founder of the Netherlands String Quartet Academy, he has worked with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Between 1977 and 1992 he taught at the Utrecht Conservatory, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and Utrecht University, and today teaches music philosophy. Among his publications are Nederlandse muziek in de 20-ste eeuw (Dutch Music in the 20th Century), a monograph on Alphons Diepenbrock, The Meaning of Music and most recently Het strijkkwartet (The String Quartet) in 2018. In 2010 he was knighted as an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contribution to Dutch musical life.

Professor Timon Screech

Professor of History of Art at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He has also taught at numerous other universities including SOAS, Chicago, Heidelberg, Meiji and Waseda. He is an expert on the art and culture of the Edo Period, including its international dimension, and has published some dozen books on the subject. His best-known work is probably Sex & the Floating World, a study of erotica, and he has recently completed a field-defining overview of the Edo arts, Obtaining Images. His work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian.

Mr Jeremy Seal

Travel writer and tour leader specialising in Turkey.  His award-winning books include A Fez of the Heart, Santa: A Life, a portrait of the extraordinary posthumous life of the Byzantine bishop who was to become Santa Claus, and Meander, which tells of the solo canoe journey he made down Turkey’s eponymous river. His most recent book, A Coup in Turkey, was published by Chatto in 2021. He has written about Turkey for a wide range of publications. He also teaches, most notably on creative non-fiction writing for the Institute of Continuing Education in Cambridge. Twitter: @JeremySeal1 | Instagram: @jeremyinturkey | Website: somewherewonderful.com

Mr Desmond Shawe-Taylor

Distinguished art historian and museum administrator whose posts have included Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures and Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery. He studied English Literature at Oxford and took an MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. He has written extensively on English eighteenth-century portraiture and other subjects, and curated a series of exhibitions at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh and London, dealing with Dutch and Flemish 17th-century art.

Mr John Shepherd

Archaeologist, with extensive experience throughout Europe. A specialist in the study of ancient glass, much of his career has been focused on Roman provincial archaeology. Working at the Museum of London for over 20 years, he published Professor W F Grimes's post war excavations on the London Temple of Mithras and the Cripplegate Roman Fort and established the Museum's Archaeological Archive and Research Centre. 

Mrs Janet Sinclair

Art historian, curator and lecturer. After a curatorial career, Janet joined the University of Birmingham’s Barber Institute and lectured in art history and heritage studies while researching early 19th-century British country house collections. She has held teaching and senior management posts at significant heritage sites in the UK including Petworth House in Sussex, Worcester Cathedral and West Dean College (University of Sussex). Janet is a member of the Attingham Society, ICOM and a Trustee of Petersfield Museum in the South Downs National Park. She is a member of the Fabric Advisory Committee of St George's Chapel, Windsor, representing the Cathedrals Fabric Commission.

Dr David Skinner

Dr David Skinner is Fellow and Osborn Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College in the University of Cambridge, and divides his time equally as a scholar and choral director. An engaging presenter, he has worked extensively for BBC radio, appearing in and writing a variety of shows on Radio 3 and 4. He acted as music advisor for the Music and Monarchy series on BBC2 with David Starkey, and was Music Consultant for the BBC4 documentary Evensong with Lucy Worsley. He has published widely on the music and musicians of early Tudor England, including a collected edition of Tallis’s Latin church music for Early English Church Music (Stainer & Bell), of which he is General Editor.

He is artistic director of the multi-award-winning early music ensemble Alamire (www.alamire.co.uk), and also directs the Choir of Sidney Sussex College, with whom he has toured and made highly acclaimed recordings. He is frequently invited to lecture, lead workshops and coach choirs throughout Europe and the USA.

Dr Guus Sluiter

Art historian and Director of the Dutch Funeral Museum in Amsterdam. He has worked in a number of other museums in the Netherlands including the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. He is a board member of the Foundation of Amsterdam Museums and Research Fellow of the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence. He has published widely in the Netherlands and Italy.

Professor Jan Smaczny

Sir Hamilton Harty Professor Emeritus, Queen’s University, Belfast, and an authority on Czech music. An author, broadcaster and journalist, he has published books on the Prague Provisional Theatre, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, Music in 19th century Ireland and Bach’s B-minor Mass. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford, has studied at the Charles University in Prague and worked extensively in university education.

Ms Christine Smallwood

Food and travel writer specializing in Italy, and is the author of a series of books, including An Appetite for Puglia: the people, the places, the food. A French graduate and Committee Member of the Guild of Food Writers, Christine was appointed the international curator of a food festival in Puglia for three years. She was awarded the Crest of Puglia by the President of the region in March 2008 in recognition of her knowledge and communication of its gastronomic culture. Twitter: @SmallwoodC | Instagram: @smallwoodcg | Website: appetiteforitaly.com

Mr Roderick Smith

Wine expert with specialist knowledge of Bordeaux. Has worked in senior roles for leading companies including Seagram and Mentzendorff. He was awarded the prestigious qualification of Master of Wine in 2006 and moved to the Côte d’Azur in 2007 where he now runs a wine academy and continues to be involved in judging wine competitions in London, Moscow and Shanghai. Twitter: @RivieraWineAc | Website: rivierawineacademy.com

Dr Nigel Spivey

Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College. Among his publications are Understanding Greek Sculpture, Greek Art, Enduring Creation, The Ancient Olympics and Classical Civilization: A History in Ten Chapters. He presented the BBC2/PBS series How Art Made the World.

Professor Michael Squire

Professor of Classical Art at King’s College London. His research interests include Greek and Roman visual culture, the history of aesthetics, the interrelations between words and images and the reception of classical forms. He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for his research into Classics and Art History and led a research project on ‘Modern Classicisms’, resulting in a major exhibition, The Classical Now, in 2018.

Dr Susan Steer

Art historian specialising in Venice. Her MA concentrated on the city’s art and architecture and her PhD on Venetian Renaissance altarpieces. As post-doctoral researcher with the University of Glasgow and Neil MacGregor scholar at the National Gallery, she worked as a researcher and editor on the National Inventory of European Painting, the UK’s online catalogue of European paintings. She has extensive experience of teaching History of Art for university programmes in the UK and Italy.

Dr Richard Stemp

Richard Stemp completed his PhD at Clare College, Cambridge on Sculpture in Ferrara in the Fifteenth Century. He was a lecturer at the National Gallery for 24 years and after a year at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts he has shared his time between art and acting. He teaches across Europe and has written books including The Secret Language of the Renaissance and Churches and Cathedrals, as well as writing and presenting two series for Channel Four, Art in the National Gallery and Tate Modern. Twitter: @drrichardstemp | Instagram: @drrichardstemp

Ms Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Archaeologist, author and broadcaster specialising in human origins. Her PhD, awarded in 2010, was the first full appraisal of the late Neanderthals of Britain for two decades. Her book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2020, won the 2021 PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize for history and was Current Archaeology magazine's Book Of The Year. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Times, The Guardian and she has featured on podcasts, including Science Rules! with Bill Nye in the US, and radio, including BBC Radio 4's Start The Week, Front Row, Infinite Monkey Cage and You're Dead To Me and Radio 3’s Freethinking.

Mr Martin Symington

Travel journalist and author who was born and grew up in northern Portugal. He contributes to many national newspapers and magazines and has won awards across the English-speaking world – including The British Guild of Travel Writers ‘Travel Writer of the Year’. His books include the Dorling Kindersley Portugal Eyewitness Guide and Sacred Britain: a Guide to Places that Stir the Soul. He has also taught courses in travel writing at the University of Bath, been Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Reading, and delivers workshops on writing skills to businesses.

Dr Matthew Symonds

Matthew is editor of Current World Archaeology magazine and one of the leading scholars on Roman frontiers in Britain. He has co-edited three volumes on Roman frontiers and is the author of Hadrian’s Wall: creating division. He is a visiting fellow at Newcastle University and lectures for the Institute of Continuing Education, Cambridge University. He has excavated in Bulgaria, Sicily, Italy, and Britain, but is most at home on Hadrian’s Wall.

Dr Nikola Theodossiev

Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Sofia University. He has published many articles and a book on Ancient Thrace. He is a member of the Archaeological Institute of America, Honorary Member of Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica, Member of the Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome and has held fellowships at several institutions, including Oxford University, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Dr Mark Thompson

Reader in Modern History, University of East Anglia. He spent most of the 1990s in Croatia as a journalist, a policy analyst for the United Nations, and then as head of media affairs for the mission in Croatia of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). His book, A Paper House, was an early account of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Since he researched Trieste for the original Rough Guide to Italy, Mark Thompson has returned many times. Other books include the prize-winning The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 and Birth Certificate. The Story of Danilo Kiš, which has been translated into Serbian, Bosnian, German and French. A new history of Italy in the mid-1940s, Like a Dragon’s Back, will appear in 2025.

Dr Giles Tillotson

Fellow (and former Director) of the Royal Asiatic Society, Giles is currently Senior Vice President at DAG (a Delhi-based art gallery). He was earlier Consultant Director at the City Palace in Jaipur, and before that Reader in History of Art and Chair of Art & Archaeology at SOAS. His specialisms include the history and architecture of the Rajput courts of Rajasthan and of the Mughal cities of Delhi and Agra; Indian architecture in the period of British rule and after Independence and landscape painting in India. Books include Taj Mahal, Jaipur Nama: Tales from the Pink City, Mughal India, The Tradition of Indian Architecture, and the novel, Return to Bhanupur.

Mr Giles Tremlett

Journalist and historian. Former Madrid correspondent for the Economist and the Guardian, he has lived in Spain for over 20 years. His books include Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain and Its Silent Past and Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen, for which he won the 2018 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. His latest book is about the International Brigades.

Dr David Trippett

University Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College.  He is author of Wagner’s Melodies (2013), editor and translator of Carl Stumpf, The Origins of Music (2012), and co-edited both The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture (2019) and Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination (2019). In 2018-19 he produced separate critical and performance editions of Liszt’s opera Sardanapalo for the Neue Liszt Ausgabe (EMB) and Schott, respectively, and currently runs a research project on ‘Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century,’ funded by the European Research Council. As a pianist he has given lecture recitals widely, including at the Library on Congress, and is the recipient of several international awards for research, including the Alfred Einstein and Lewis Lockwood Prizes (American Musicological Society), the Bruno Nettl Prize (Society for Ethnomusicology), an ASCAP Deems Taylor award, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize.

Dr Thomas-Leo True

Art historian specialising in Renaissance and Baroque architecture in Rome and the Papal States, and Assistant Director of the British School at Rome from September 2015. He received his doctorate from Cambridge University, and also studied at the British School at Rome, where he was Rome Scholar (2009–10) and Giles Worsley Fellow (2013). He has lived in Le Marche region of Italy and is currently writing his first book on the Marchigian Cardinals of Pope Sixtus V.

Dr David Vickers

Author, journalist, broadcaster and lecturer, he works as a consultant for many international Baroque music organisations and teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia, is preparing new editions of several of Handel’s music dramas and is a critic for Gramophone and BBC Radio 3. He also writes essays for record labels including BIS, Chandos, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI and Harmonia Mundi.

Dr Matthias Vollmer

Art historian and a specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Germany. He read History of Art, Philosophy, and Orientalism at the Freie Universität Berlin and did his PhD on mediaeval book illustration. Matthias now lectures on the European Studies Programme at the Freie Universität Berlin. He also regularly lectures at the Courtauld Summer School and the Berlin University of the Art. His current work focuses on colour theories in the Dutch 17th century. He has published on Mediaeval Book Painting and architecture and, among others, contributed an article to the Courtauld exhibition catalogue Michelangelo’s Dream in 2010.

Dr Rose Walker

Specialist in the art and architecture of medieval Spain. She was Academic Registrar and Deputy Secretary of The Courtauld Institute of Art, before deciding to pursue a second career as an art historian. She has published two books: Views of Transition. Liturgy and Illumination in Medieval Spain (1998) and Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages: Routes and Myths (2016), as well as a range of articles on manuscripts, sculpture, wall-paintings and the sumptuary arts. She has taught courses and lectured on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Mr Bert Watteeuw

Curator of research collections at the Antwerp Rubenianum, devoted to Peter Paul Rubens and Flemish art of the 16th- and 17th-centuries. He previously worked at the Department of Art History at the University of Leuven and has collaborated on exhibitions on Renaissance portraiture: Anthony van Dyck (The Frick Collection, New York) and Peter Paul Rubens (Rubenshuis, Antwerp). Bert is currently preparing an exhibition to be held at Antwerp's MAS museum in 2018 and is conceptualising a new visitor centre for the Rubens House that is due to open in 2019. 

Dr Peter Webb

Lecturer in Arabic at Leiden University and a specialist in the cultural history of the Muslim world. Peter has travelled extensively across the Middle East and Central Asia and has studied at the Universities of Damascus and Isfahan. He held a fellowship at the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, where he researched Muslim architecture and Arabic calligraphy, studying monuments of medieval Egypt and Uzbekistan. In Oman, he studied pre-Islamic sites and local shrines dedicated to ancient Arabian prophets in as part of his current research focus on the legends and history of Arabia. His publications include Imagining the Arabs (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), a comprehensive exploration of the Arab people in early Islam, and The Arab Thieves (Brill, 2019), a critical study of Arabian outlaw tales.

Ms Lucy Whitaker

Lucy Whitaker is Senior Curator of Paintings in the Royal Collection and curator of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace (19 May–12 November 2017). She has also coauthored several books including Canaletto and the Art of Venice and The Northern Renaissance.

Dr Adam White

Art historian and museum curator. He has worked at the Leeds Museums and Galleries since 1983. Since 1994 he has been based at Lotherton Hall and Temple Newsam House. He is Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and has published widely on British art, particularly sculpture and has led several country house tours.

Mr Richard Wigmore

Music writer, lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He writes for BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone and has taught classes in Lieder history and interpretation at the Guildhall, Trinity College of Music and Birkbeck College. He read French and German at Cambridge and later studied Music at the Guildhall. His publications include Schubert: The Complete Song Texts and Pocket Guide to Haydn. Twitter: @wigmoresworld | Website: wigmoresworld.co.uk

Mr Simon Williams

Organist and Director of Music at St George’s Hanover Square 2000–2022, where he was closely involved with the commissioning of the new organ installed in 2012, and Music Director for Harrow Choral Society 1990–2022. Currently he is Director for the Royal College of Organists’ East, South and South West regions. He is also an RCO Accredited Teacher.

Ms Elizabeth Wilson

Elizabeth Wilson was born in London, and studied cello at the Moscow Conservatoire with Mstislav Rostropovich between 1964–1971, also becoming fluent in Russian. On her return to London she embarked on a performing, teaching and writing career. Since 1990 she has lived in Italy where she co-founded the EstOvest music festival and the much acclaimed Xenia International summer course for string players, both held in Piemonte. Her books include Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994, 2006) and musical biographies of Jacqueline du Pré and Rostropovich. She edited the first ever anthology of Shostakovich’s letters, published in Italy by Saggiatore (2006). Playing with Fire, her biography of the legendary Russian pianist Maria Yudina, was published by Yale in 2024.

Dr Lucy Davis Winckler

Dr Neil Younger

Dr Neil Younger is a Lecturer in History at the Open University, and has previously researched and taught at the Universities of Birmingham and Durham and Vanderbilt University in the US. He is a specialist in Tudor politics, government and court culture. He is the author of War and Politics in the Elizabethan Counties and has written on topics such as the Spanish Armada, the second earl of Essex and Elizabethan court entertainments. He is currently at work on a biography of the Elizabethan courtier Sir Christopher Hatton.

Dr Ulrike Ziegler

Specialist in mediaeval art and architecture. She studied art history and archaeology at the University of Regensburg and King’s College Aberdeen. Her PhD focused on art exhibitions and the cultural politics of post-war Germany. She has taught at university and now lectures for various cultural institutions as well as organising and leading many study days and trips in Germany and Austria.