Roberta Gilchrist is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading as well as Research Dean for Heritage & Creativity (Arts & Humanities). She is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Society of Antiquaries and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.
Roberta’s research focuses on medieval social archaeology, especially medieval religion, gender, magic, burial and religious communities, including detailed studies of Glastonbury Abbey and Norwich Cathedral. She has shared her research with non-academic audiences through television and radio broadcasts and prestigious public lectures series including the Dalrymple Lectures (2011) and the Rhind Lectures (2017). Roberta has won several UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grants for research, including her project Glastonbury Abbey: Storytelling through Immersive Heritage Practice, the results of which have been shared through co-created resources including an AR app and heritage trail, digital reconstructions. She is currently the PI for the four-year AHRC-funded project The Medieval Ritual Landscape: Archaeology, Material Culture and Lived Religion, which examines the deep history of ritual practices in medieval England. Roberta was voted Current Archaeology’s ‘Archaeologist of the Year’ in 2016.