IWD2025 - Accelerate Action

The Institute of Archaeology has a long history of women's leadership and expertise in the discipline. 

Kathleen Kenyon

Kathleen Kenyon - a true trailblazer and one of the most influential women archaeologists of the 20^th century - Secretary and then the Institute of Archaeology's Acting Director during World War II, she was a renowned field archaeologist. Her excavations in Jericho and Jerusalem are amongst the most famous in the history of archaeology. 

Kathleen also excavated in the UK throughout her career, including the Jewry Wall excavations in Leicester, Southwark Cathedral in London, and three Iron Age hill forts at Breedon on the Hill in the West Midlands, the Wrekin in Hertfordshire and Sutton Walls in Herefordshire. Her work with Mortimer Wheeler at Verulamium led to the development of the Wheeler-Kenyon excavation method - based on 5 by 5 metre square trenches, separated by 1 metre baulks in which the stratigraphic record of what had been dug through was preserved and diligently recorded. 

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• ‘An Awfully Nice Job’. Kathleen Kenyon as Secretary and Acting Director of the University of London Institute of Archaeology, 1935–1948

Tessa Verney Wheeler

A specialist in Romano-British archaeology, Tessa Verney Wheeler was an accomplished lecturer and field archaeologist who directed excavations at Segontium, Gaer, Caerleon, Lydney Park, Verulamium and Maiden Castle with her husband. Together they pioneered field techniques that remain essential to the discipline today as well as the strict technical training of students which remains a defining characteristic of Institute of Archaeology undergraduate degrees today.  We are honoured that we are able to manage a new endowed fund ‘The Tessa Verney Wheeler Memorial Award,’ supporting student fieldwork.

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• Tessa Verney Wheeler Memorial Award

Read more about the women of the early Institute of Archaeology

Sue Hamilton

More recently, Sue Hamilton, an expert in gender archaeology, served as the first permanent female Director of the Institute of Archaeology from 2014-22 and during this period we received the Athena Swan Bronze Award in recognition of our ongoing commitment to advancing gender equality. Our Bronze Award affirms that we have a solid foundation for eliminating gender bias and developing an inclusive culture that values all staff and students. Sue continues her research on landscape, and sensory, archaeology including her work on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and is currently Vice-Dean for Research and Global Engagement in the UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences.

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• Ask an Academic: Sue Hamilton 

Louise Rayner

Louise Rayner is the first female Director of Archaeology South-East (ASE) being appointed to the role in 2023 and having been part of the ASE Senior Management Team since 2005. ASE is a research and contract unit based within the UCL Institute of Archaeology and has been undertaking fieldwork projects and training since 1974, when it was established as the Sussex Archaeological Field Unit. ASE is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a conference being held on 5 April 2025 exploring 50 years of archaeological discovery and innovation and highlighting its commitment to the delivery of public value and knowledge exchange through commercial archaeology.

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• Find out more about ASE's activities and 50th anniversary conference

UCL Institute of Archaeology and Archaeology South-East colleagues continue to lead on teaching, research, innovation and development, supporting students throughout their time with us and beyond.

Recent highlights involving female colleagues include

• Prehistoric bone tool ‘factory’ of 1.5 million years ago revealed (Renata Peters)
• Science Museum Group - Looking Back, Looking Forward (Theano Moussouri)
• Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt (Alice Stevenson)
• The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa (Rachel King)
• Developing Critical Museum Practice (Alice Stevenson)
• Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE (Ruth Whitehouse)
• Milking It: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy (Johanna Zetterstrom Sharp)
• Museums, Identity and Family Practices (Theano Moussouri)
• Following the fish: Using ichthyoarchaeology to study human dispersals through Island Southeast Asia (Clara Boulanger)
• New volume on the everyday life of death (Claudia Naeser)
• Weaving fibres of resistance: Tikuna tree bark and identity in the Amazon (Renata Peters)
• Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice (Alice Stevenson)
• Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies (Rachel King)
• Antiquity Prize 2024 awarded to research on the Islamic green revolution (Corisande Fenwick)
• Sada Mire headlines Somali Week Festival 2024 (Sada Mire)
• Sara Perry appointed to REF2029 Advisory Panel (Sara Perry)

A selection of articles written by current Institute of Archaeology female staff, students and alumni, as well as Archaeology South-East colleagues, published in recent issues of Archaeology International (fully online and open access) are highlighted below.

Recent articles

• Studying at the Institute of Archaeology - Charlotte Frearson and Lisa Daniel
• ‘An Essay on the Prehistoric Chronology of the British Isles’: an unpublished essay by Vere Gordon Childe. Disciplinary debates, changing chronological paradigms, and the ‘Radiocarbon Revolution’ - Katie Meheux
• Keeping the faith: early Christian intaglios as indexes of agency - Hannah Faux
• Sussex Archaeological Field Unit to Archaeology South-East: celebrating 50 years - Louise Rayner
• The Eneolithic necropolis at Urziceni-Vamă, Romania: excavations in 2023 - Ulrike Sommer and Cristian Virag
• The UCL Institute of Archaeology Field School 2024: from villas to Victorians at St Andrew’s Church and the Old Rectory, Norton, Suffolk - Murray Andrews, Stuart Brookes and Lucy Sladen
• Alumni Reflections - Raksha Dave (BSc Archaeology)  
• Alumni Reflections - Noël Siver (BSc Archaeological Conservation)

Listen 

Listen again to our Soundcloud podcasts, a series of which was developed by Charlotte Frearson, for previous International Women's Days and Women's History Month. Also available on Soundcloud is the podcast series  'Only Collections in The Building' created by researcher and museum activist Heba Abd el Gawad, and Associate Professor Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp, and which forms part of the AHRC-funded project 'Mobilising Collections for Institutional Change: Egypt at the Horniman', co-led by Johanna and Alice Stevenson.

The Institute of Archaeology has a Women's Forum (established in 2000), which is open to all staff and students, providing a platform to discuss issues of gender equality and inclusion in a wider sense while our Equality & Diversity Forum provides a supportive and inclusive environment for discussion of any issues relating to Equality, Diversity, Gender and/or Sexuality.  

Underpinning all of the activities of the UCL Institute of Archaeology and Archaeology South-East are a dedicated team of PS staff, many of whom are women, providing subject-area expertise, knowledge and understanding, to ensure the successful implementation of our strategic aims and objectives.

IWD 2025

• International Women's Day 2025 campaign theme: #AccelerateAction
• UCL marks Women's History Month and International Women’s Day