Executive
Ross Parry, MCG Chair
Academic Director and Senior Lecturer,
School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
Ross has been an MCG member since 1999, became a committee member in 2002, and was elected chair in 2008. He is a trustee of the Jodi Mattes Trust, and has served as chair of judges for the national Jodi Awards – recognising excellence within the heritage sector in the use of digital media for improving the experiences of disabled visitors. In 2005 he was made a HIRF Innovations Fellow for his work on developing in-gallery digital media, and in 2007 was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to meeting the training needs of the cultural heritage sector. In 2009 he was made a Tate Research Fellow.
As senior lecturer at University of Leicester, Ross has led the development of its innovative new Masters programme in Digital Heritage. A frequent speaker at national and international events and publishing widely in the area of museum computing, Ross is the author of the book ‘Recoding the Museum: digital heritage and technologies of change’ (Routledge 2007), the first major history of museum computing. and edited ‘Museums in a Digital Age’ (Routledge 2010).
Dave Patten, Secretary
Head of New Media, Science Museum
Dave Patten is Head of New Media at the Science Museum, London. His responsibilities include; new media strategy, managing and developing new media based exhibits & experiences and giving technical advice on all aspects of exhibition development.
He has worked at the Science Museum in London for more than 20 years and in that time has been involved in numerous permanent & temporary exhibitions as well as 2 major building projects.
John Williams, Members 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 …
Communications team
Mia Ridge
Lead Web Developer, Science Museum
Mia Ridge is a cultural heritage technologist, and has worked internationally as an analyst, consultant and programmer. Her work currently focuses on the application of human-computer interaction theories and user experience design to museum interpretation, interactives and collections online. Mia is completing an MSc in Human-Centred Systems at City University where her dissertation project is on game design to crowdsource museum collection metadata.
Mia has written and presented on a range of topics including best practices for museum websites and on the possibilities of the participatory web for the cultural heritage sector. Mia’s personal blog, Open Objects can be read at http://openobjects.blogspot.com/
Rhiannon Looseley
E-Learning Officer (Web), Museum of London
Rhiannon Looseley graduated from the University of Warwick in French and History in 2003, and obtained an MA in Modern History from the University of Reading in 2005. She began her museum career at The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) where she worked in various different roles from 2005 until 2008. During her time at the BPMA Rhiannon completed her MA in Museum Studies by Distance Learning at the University of Leicester, finishing the course with a dissertation on the opportunities and challenges for museums using wiki technology.
In September 2008 she left the BPMA to take up a role as the E-Learning Officer (Web) at the Museum of London. In this role, she takes responsibility for online learning at both the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands. Projects so far have included overseeing the development of two interactive games for 3-5 year olds, working on a project to develop web resources for special educational needs (SEN) schools, and reviewing and renewing all the information and structure of the Learning site.
Mike Ellis
Solutions Architect, Eduserv
Mike Ellis works for a Bath-based company called Eduserv who are a not for profit IT services group. He is a Solutions Architect which basically means he helps clients (both internal and external) with the web, forming rough ideas into workable and user-accessible end-results.
Before working for Eduserv, Mike was Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York.
Mike’s interests are in the social web, UX, ubiquitous computing and innovation, and how to lever these for maximum benefit, particularly in cultural institutions. Mike does a lot of writing and presenting about the web and what it means to people and institutions, recently wrote a unit for the new Digital Heritage course at Leicester University, and is hopefully about to write a book all about the web and cultural institutions.
Events team
Gemma Sturtridge
Assistant Collections Officer, Museum of Croydon
Gemma has over 6 years experience working in the museum sector. 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 the Museum of London, Royal Naval Museum and Portsmouth City Museum.
Her current diverse role gives her responsibility for the Museum of Croydon’s collections and information. 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.
Denise Drake
Web Coordinator at Futureversity
Denise is Web Coordinator at Futureversity, a London based charity working with young people, and is responsible for its online presence, including the website and activity on social network sites.
She has worked as an administrator 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 is currently studying for an MA in Digital Heritage by Distance Learning at the University of Leicester and undertaking a dissertation on museums, communities and social media.
Projects team
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.