Executive
Mia Ridge, MCG Chair
Doctoral researcher, Open University
Mia is currently researching a PhD in digital humanities (Department of History, Open University), focusing on crowdsourcing, digitisation and the geo-location of historical materials. Mia has published and presented widely on her key areas of interest including: user experience and human-computer interaction, audience engagement and crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage sector.
Formerly Lead Web Developer at the Science Museum/NMSI, Mia has worked internationally as a business analyst, digital consultant and web programmer in the cultural heritage and commercial sectors. Mia has post-graduate qualifications in software development (RMIT University, 2001) and an MSc in Human-Centred Systems (City University, London, 2011). She tweets at @mia_out and blogs at http://openobjects.blogspot.com/.
John Williams, Secretary
Head of ICT, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales
While John has worked in Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales since late 1999 initially as a Project Manager responsible for delivering a wide area network and latterly as Head of ICT, his background is in heavy industry. Originally an apprentice he studied Electronics at the University of Kent before returning to British Steel at Port Talbot in 1974 to work as a shift engineer on blast furnace relines. Several years designing and implementing process control software for the coke ovens and blast furnaces followed after which he left to work on gas control systems and computer networks at Wales Gas. He became a Chartered Engineer in 1985. Following privatisation John moved to British Gas Retail in 1994 to help establish their network and, when they closed in 1999, he moved to the Museum.
Outside work he followed a second degree with the Open University in History. He drinks espresso, reads the Guardian, and enjoys travelling in Europe, particularly Italy. His other interests include museums, computers, photography, walking, detective fiction, European history, politics, and folk music. He has been known to sing in a choir and is currently learning to play an alto saxophone.
Angus Kneale, Treasurer
Collections Systems Manager, National Museums Scotland
Angus is the Collections Systems Manager for the National Museums Scotland and is based at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where he has worked since 1990. The main responsibilities of his post are the development and support of the NMS’s Collections Management information and image management systems.
In previous lives he has been a computer programmer and would-be semi-pro musician, amongst other odd jobs. On landing his first museum job as temporary part-time Assistant Curator at the Scottish Mining Museum, he quipped, “Maybe this is the start of a new direction for me!” Little did he know at the time …
Committee members
Dafydd James
Dafydd leads the New Media department at Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales, which is responsible for developing digital content for all seven national museums in Wales. After gaining a Physics degree and an MSc in Multimedia Engineering, Dafydd began work as e-Learning Officer based at St Fagans: National History Museum. He developed various websites, Learning resources and exhibition displays before moving to his current role as Head of New Media. Dafydd is currently responsible for coordinating the department’s activities and implementing the organisation’s strategic initiatives in digital media. He is chair of the Technology Strand for People Collection Wales and a Trustee for Audiences Wales.
Denise Drake
Digital, Online and Social Media Coordinator at Birkbeck, University of London
Denise is Digital, Online and Social Media Coordinator for the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy at Birkbeck College. She works closely with academic and administrative staff from across the School to develop and systematise its on-line presence for potential students, researchers and staff to help maximise recruitment and build the profile of the School using new digital, on-line and social media platforms.
Denise previously worked as senior administrator in the Conservation Department at Tate and in a number of departments at the Victoria & Albert Museum including The National Art Library, the Archive of Art & Design, The British Galleries Project, Learning & Interpretation and Apsley House. After 2 years as part the web team at NICE, she rejoined the V&A as Web Content Manager for a HLF project Capacity Building and Cultural Ownership.
Denise graduated from Leicester Polytechnic in 1986 with a BA in History of Art and Design in the Modern Period, and from Birkbeck College, University of London in 2004 with an MA in Digital Art History. She graduated in 2011 as one of the fist cohort of a new MA in Digital Heritage by Distance Learning at the University of Leicester, completing a dissertation entitled Can museums create authentic and sustainable relationships with their audiences through social media?
Gemma Sturtridge, Events
Collections Systems Officer, Imperial War Museums
Gemma has over 8 years experience working in the museum sector. Her current diverse role gives her responsibility for the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) collections management system Adlib. She has a well-rounded skill set of research, documentation and collections management as well as a good knowledge of HTML, SQL and databases. She is particularly interested in the application of IT for interpretation.
After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a BA Medieval Studies she completed a MA Museum Studies degree at University of Southampton. Gemma has worked at Museum of Croydon, Museum of London, Royal Naval Museum and Portsmouth City Museum.
Rhiannon Looseley, Events
Online Learning Manager, Museum of London
Rhiannon has over six years’ experience of working in museums, much of it revolving around work on the web. She has a BA in French and History, an MA in Modern History and an MA in Museum Studies. She began her museum career at The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) where she worked in various different roles from 2005 until 2008.
In September 2008 she left the BPMA to take up a role as the Online Learning Manager at the Museum of London. In this role, she project manages the development of new online learning resources and programme manages the overall online learning offer at both the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands. Projects have included overseeing the development of two interactive games for 3-5 year olds, developing web resources for special educational needs (SEN) schools, creating a new Picturebank of images for schools and colleges, developing a set of new ‘Pocket Histories’ and developing interactive whiteboard presentations and quizzes.
On the MCG Committee, Rhiannon works with Gemma on planning forthcoming events and conferences, taking responsibility mostly for all events communication.
Follow @rlooseley
View Rhiannon Loosely’s profile on LinkedIn
Rhiannon blogs at www.rhiannonlooseley.blogspot.com
Linda Spurdle
Digital Resources Manager, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Linda Spurdle is Digital Resources Manager at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. She has been involved in managing digital projects in museums since 1997 when she worked for East Riding of Yorkshire Museums on their digitising community history project. She worked for Tyne & Wear Museums managing their NOF funded ‘IMAGINE’ project 2001 – 2004 before moving to Birmingham to become Hub Online Resources Manager for Renaissance West Midlands. Her job is now focused on managing and developing digital resources at BMAG. From 2007 to 2009 she managed the JISC funded Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource project.
Linda is also involved in setting up a social enterprise for Deaf and Disabled digital experts, evangelists and activists called Pesky People.
Adrian Stevenson
Adrian is a Senior Technical Innovations Coordinator working in the libraries and archives team at Mimas, a national centre for technical innovations and data services based at the University of Manchester – http://www.mimas.ac.uk. Adrian is currently working on a number of open data and linked data projects. ‘Linking Lives’ (http://archiveshub.ac.uk/linkinglives/) is using archival linked open data to build an interface based around names. He is also working on an open data initiative called ‘Discovery’ (http://discovery.ac.uk/) which is promoting the idea of aggregatable open data for libraries, archives and museums. Part of this work includes project managing a World War One exemplar project that will be building an interface based on aggregated open data.
Adrian is also a guitar player, one of the directors of the annual Manchester Jazz Festival and hosts a radio show on Manchester’s ALL FM 96.9 station.
Follow @adrianstevenson
View Adrian Stevenson’s profile on LinkedIn
David Little
David is currently working as senior user interface designer at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. David’s primary responsibilities are user experience design and visual design
across a range of digital humanities and digital cultural heritage projects. He is particularly interested in projects with an application beyond the academy, including participatory projects involving crowdsourcing. Prior to King’s, David worked for a number of educational and cultural heritage organisations, including the BBC, the Wellcome Trust and Birkbeck, University of London as well as occasionally working freelance.
Emma McLean
Emma is Digital Marketing Officer at Royal Museums Greenwich, which includes the National Maritime Museum, Royal Observatory Greenwich and The Queen’s House. Emma was appointed as the first digital marketing specialist at the Museum in 2010, her role inputs into a number of cross museum activities, including web content and design, email marketing, social media, online advertising, strategy and policy development and analytics for digital activity across the three sites.
Emma’s background is in audience development for the cultural sector, having worked for two of the regional agencies in Manchester and London. Her move to digital marketing grew out of the development of a benchmarking project to measure online engagement whilst in her role at Audiences London; this project compared online data from 12 of London’s biggest off west end theatres, with an aim to find out what really matters to audiences and visitors when it comes to digital content.
Emma’s specialist experience lies in developing policy, process and understanding appropriate and effective use for promotional activity on social media, and measuring online engagement – meaningful evaluation and analysis of interaction with websites, advertising, social media and other platforms against targets and objectives. She has given talks on these at Museums and Heritage show, The Courthauld Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions and the UK Cultural PR Conference. Up next she will be speaking on where digital marketing ends and digital learning begins at MuseumNext in Barcelona (May 2012).