Research
Research groups
Research interests
- I am a Maritime Archaeologist primarily focused in the study of ships and shipwrecks.
- My research interests concern ways we can better understand the shipwreck sites we are dealing with. I focus on developing theoretical concepts and methodological tools that allow us to better understand people in the past. These include the role of non-human and natural objects and forces in archaeological assemblages, discussions of the Anthropocene, and the integration of different resources into archaeological methods.
- I am also interested in the application of archaeological process. I am curious about approaches to data collection and excavation and enjoy learning new processes and techniques—or variations on skills and systems I already use. I am interested in the interoperability of data and exploring the integration of static digital archives with archaeological datasets and other data sources, and the interoperability of records and collections. This has developed into my current focus of implementing AI and ML-based systems to facilitate the study of maritime heritage data.
- In all these questions my focus is on how these techniques and systems can expand our knowledge of people in the past and how they experienced the world.
- My experience with remote sensing, geophysics, and desk-based studies has led me to ask questions about what depth of understanding our engagement gives us about underwater sites and the issues this may raise in relying on remote sensing and geophysical systems rather than deploying a full suite of archaeological tools.
Current research
I am currently working as a researcher on the AHRC/UKRI funded project "Unpath'd Waters" which is part of the "Towards a National Collection" initiative developed by the AHRC. This focuses on improving access to Britain's Maritime Heritage collections and archives, and enabling search and discovery of material from across those resources by utilising tecniques for linked-open data. The UK's marine heritage is extraordinarily rich and exciting. Wrecks on the sea bed range in date from the Bronze Age to the World Wars and bear testimony to Britain as an island nation, a destination for trade and conquest, and in past times, the heart of a global empire. Communities along the coast have been shaped by their maritime heritage and monuments and stories recall losses and heroes. Much further back in time, before the Bronze Age, a great deal of what is now the North Sea was dry land, peopled by prehistoric communities who lived in lowland landscapes, some on very different coastlines. The British Isles would have been distant uplands above hills and plains and rivers.
This arc of heritage, stretching over 23,000 years, is represented by an abundance of collections. Charts and maps, documents, images, film, oral histories, sonar surveys, seismic data, bathymetry, archaeological investigations, artefacts and objects, artworks and palaeoenvironmental cores all tell us different things about our marine legacy. But they can't
easily be brought together. They are dispersed, held in archives, unconnected and inaccessible.
This matters because it is clear that the story of our seas is of huge interest to the UK public. In 2019 alone, there were 2.9m visits to Royal Museums Greenwich, home of the National Maritime Museum; 1.1m visits to National Museum Royal Navy; 837,000 visits to Merseyside Maritime Museum, and 327,000 visits to HMS Belfast. It is also clear that our exploitation of our seas is increasing dramatically. Windfarms, mining, dredging for aggregates, port expansions, leisure and fishing are all placing tensions on the survival of our heritage. If we are to unlock new stories and manage our past effectively and sustainably, we need to join up all our marine collections and get the most of them.
UNPATH will bring together first class universities, heritage agencies, museums, charitable trusts and marine experts to work out how to join these collections up. It will use Artificial Intelligence to devise new ways of searching across newly linked collections, simulations to help visualise the wrecks and landscapes, and science to help identify wrecks and find out more about the artefacts and objects from them. It will deliver integrated management tools to help protect our most significant heritage. And it will invite the public to help co-design new ways of interacting with the collections and to help enhance them from their own private collections. The methods, code and resources created will be published openly so they can used to shape the future of UK marine heritage.