Dr Helen Wickstead MCIfA FHEA FSA
Contact
- Email: h.wickstead@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Kingston School of Art, Knights Park
- Faculty: Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Creative and Cultural Industries
- Department: Department of Creative Industries
About
Dr Helen Wickstead is Senior Lecturer in Museum and Gallery Studies at Kingston University, London. Working as an archaeologist and curator, she has spent decades excavating rubbish and rescuing forgotten, neglected, stigmatised or hidden phenomena. Her publications include; histories of aerial archaeology and old maps; the world's first dedicated study of Soho Bibles (including the discovery of 21 smuggled into the British Library); an archaeology of concrete megaliths; an investigation of suburban folklore; nineteenth-century photographs from the secret museum inside the British Museum; a study of phallus collecting; an account of the Edwardian Cult of Kata and assorted archaeological excavation reports. Her research has been funded by English Heritage, AHRC, and Wellcome Trust.
Helen has worked as an archaeologist and museum professional in the UK, France, Czech Republic, Turkey and Sudan. As Director of Art + Archaeology she created 21 funded short residencies for visual artists working at excavations, laboratories and museums and co-curated exhibitions at venues including Whitworth Art Gallery and Salisbury International Arts Festival. In 2012, when the government introduced huge rises in university tuition fees, Helen founded the Free University of Seething to encourage free learning for all. She is currently Archaeologist of Today at the Museum of Today and Professor of the Overlooked at the Free University of Seething. She is a member of the AHRC Early Career Peer Review Panel and a Museum Mentor for the Society for Museum Archaeology. She has a doctorate from UCL and has been elected to the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) at the highest corporate level. She is Director of Recycle Archaeology a project creating new social and sustainable uses for artefacts that cannot find a home in museums.
Academic responsibilities
Senior Lecturer and Course Director
Qualifications
- M.A. Archaeology, University College London
- PhD. Archaeology, University College London