The project leader is Dr David Petts, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at Durham University. He's been working on the archaeology of north-eastern England for fifteen years. Although much of his research has been focused on the early medieval world, he is increasingly interested in the archaeology of the more recent past, particularly the 19th and 20th centuries. He has run major excavations at the Roman fort at Binchester close to Bishop Auckland, and is currently leading a new excavation project exploring the site of the early medieval monastery at Holy Island.
Dr Kayt Armstrong is working on the Landscape-scale aspect of the project. She completed her BA at Southampton and went on to take an MSc there in Archaeological Computing, before doing her PhD in archaeological geophysics at Bournemouth University. Since then she has worked on landscape archaeological projects in Italy and on Crete, as well as a recent stint in commercial archaeology in the UK. She has published research on the women’s peace camps at Greenham Common and is particularly interested in contested landscapes and integrating different scales and types of information using GIS.
The study of the four case study sites is being carried out by Dr Ronan O'Donnell. His wider research focuses on landscape archaeology of the medieval to modern periods with a particular focus on post-medieval and modern landscapes, and on North-East England.He holds a BSc and PhD in Archaeology from Durham University and an MA in English Local History from University of Leicester, thus my expertise bridges Archaeology and History. His PhD (completed 2014) applied Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to the examination of enclosure during the 18th and 19th centuries in Northumberland, UK. This revealed the complexity of the interplay between global and local actors within enclosure and its associated landscape changes.
We also have the support of a great project advisory team, who are providing oversight and practical input into the project. This groups consists of Dr Dan Hicks (Oxford University/Pitt-Rivers Museum), Dr Martyn Hudson (Newcastle University), Dr Andrzej Olechnowicz (Dept of History, Durham University), Dr Sefryn Penrose (Atkins Global), Dr Jonathan Finch (Dept of Archaeology, University of York) and Dr Quentin Lewis.