BIEA ASSISTANT DIRECTORS

Matthew Davies, 2008-present

Matthew Davies took up the post of Assistant Director in November 2008 after just submitting his DPhil at the University of Oxford. His doctoral research explored the archaeology and ethnohistory of intensive agricultural development among the Pokot of northwest Kenya during the last 500 years.

He is currently writing up aspects of his thesis and is planning to investigate a number of promising archaeological sites in West Pokot, Kenya and Karamoja, Uganda. He has also just embarked on a new joint project with the National Museums of Kenya and the Rock Art Institute at the University of Witwatersrand looking at the Archaeology of the Ngamoratung'a burial site in South Turkana, Kenya. Matthew's primary interests focus on better understanding the longterm relationship between humans and their environment. He also has a longstanding interest in the ethnography of street children and hopes to develop this research in the near future.

Stephanie Wynne-Jones, 2005-2008

Stephanie Wynne-Jones was appointed Assistant Director having just completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research was a regional study of Kilwa, in southern Tanzania, putting the growth of the town of Kilwa Kisiwani into its context within the local settlement pattern.

Her current research interests include early urbanism, the meaning of ceramic variation and the production and use of material culture. At BIEA she expanded these themes through research on Mafia island, around Ujiji next to Lake Tanganyika, and through excavations at Vumba Kuu on the southern Kenya coast. Stephanie now holds a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Bristol.

Andrew Burton, 2001-2005

Andrew Burton was appointed to the Assistant Directorship having completed a PhD at SOAS on the colonial response to urbanisation in Dar es Salaam during British rule. Research findings have been published in a series of articles and in a 2005 monograph in the BIEA-Currey series.

His research while at the institute covered issues of urbanisation in eastern Africa; the penal system in Tanzania; youth and delinquency in colonial and post-colonial Anglophone East Africa.

He is currently an affiliated researcher with the BIEA based in Addis Ababa, where he is working on articles and a monograph arising from his research on youth and delinquency.

Shane Doyle, 1997-2000

Shane Doyle was appointed in September 1997, shortly before completing his PhD from Cambridge on the modern demographic and environmental history of Bunyoro, western Uganda.

His research while at the institute compared Bunyoro’s experience with that of Buhaya in northwest Tanzania, focussing on demographic and ecological consequences of limited land and problems of ill-health.

He is currently a lecturer in Wider World History at the Department of History, University of Leeds.

Justin Willis, 1989-1997

Justin Willis was appointed Assistant Director immediately on completion of his doctorate at SOAS, in 1989. His thesis had been concerned with Mombasa in the early colonial period, and particularly with the politics of identity involved in migration into Mombasa from the local hinterland.

While with the institute, these research themes were extended to Bondei. He also worked on the nature of political power and pastoralist-agriculturalist relations in south-western Uganda, and the Giryama expansion on the Kenya coast. He left the Institute in 1997, to undertake a major new project on alcohol in Eastern Africa, partly supported by the ESRC but with generous backing from the Institute.

Between 2006 and 2009 Justin returned to the Institute as Director on secondment from the University of Durham where he is Professor of History.

Peter Robertshaw, 1979-1988
Peter Robertshaw was appointed as Assistant Director in 1979, prior to which he was employed as an archaeologist at the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa. While in post, he completed his PhD from Cambridge in 1980.

While at the institute, he conducted research in the southern Sudan, at Later Stone Age shell midden sites on Lake Victoria and on early pastoralist sites in south-western Kenya. Shortly before leaving his post in 1988 to take up a one-year appointment at the University of Georgia, Robertshaw began to investigate state formation in western Uganda, which continues to be one of his main research interests.

He is now Professor of Anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino.

David Phillipson, 1973-1978
David Phillipson was appointed Assistant Director in 1973 from the (then) Zambia National Monuments Commission, where he had been Director.

As BIEA Assistant Director, he worked mainly on later prehistoric sites in northern Kenya (including Lowasera and Ele Bor) and made the initial reconnaissance of sites in the southern Sudan as part of a planned BIEA inter-disciplinary project. He also worked with Neville Chittick at Aksum in 1974. While in post, he edited a special issue of Azania (vol. 12) on the Late Stone Age of East Africa, as well as completing a BIEA memoir on the Prehistory of Zambia.

In the 1990s he conducted major renewed investigations at Aksum. He recently retired from post as Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Professor of African Archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

Robert Soper, 1965-1972
Robert Soper joined the Institute from the Nigerian Federal Department of Antiquities at the beginning of 1965, at the time when the Institute was being relocated to Nairobi.

His main research involved a series of pioneering surveys of Iron Age sites in south-eastern and central Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania, the Mwanza area south of Lake Victoria and the Chobi area of Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. The discovery of the Kwale tradition extended the distribution of the Early Iron Age complex to the East African coast. He took over the directorship of the Institute’s Bantu Studies project from Brian Fagan. He also assisted Neville Chittick in excavations at Kilwa and Manda.

He left in 1972 to take up a Senior Lectureship in the newly created Archaeology Department at Ibadan, Nigeria. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Zimbabwe.

Merrick Posnansky, 1962-1964

Merrick Posnansky was appointed Assistant Director in charge of the Kampala Office of the British Institute at the Uganda Museum in 1962, where he had been curator since 1958.

As Assistant Director, he was involved in the negotiations with the nascent University of East Africa (UEA) for the Institute’s affiliation and the selection of a permanent base for the Institute. As part of this, he organized a regional training program in archaeology, with fieldwork training components at Kilwa (Tanzania) and Moiben (Kenya) in 1963. Also in 1962, he assisted the Brathay Exploration Group in bringing British and Uganda youth together to work on the rock art site of Nyero, the historic fort of Dufile and to engage in ethnoarchaeological work on Mount Elgon. While in post, he excavated at the Middle Stone Age site of Nyabusora (Tanzania) and the Later Stone Age and rock art site of Magosi (Uganda). He also taught archaeology at Makerere University College, the first regular courses in archaeology at a tropical African university, and wrote the blueprint for archaeology instruction for the UEA.

He is now Emeritus Professor of African Archaeology at UCLA, California.