Professor Sarah Semple has been elected as a Fellow of the prestigious British Academy.
The fellowship recognises Sarah’s contribution to the discipline and research on the landscapes, material culture and funerary archaeology of early medieval Britain and northern Europe.
Sarah, who joined our Department of Archaeology in 2006, also researches the importance of physical remains in shaping identity and power.
She is currently completing the British Academy-funded project the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, based in our Department of Archaeology.
The project is the first comprehensive catalogue of the substantial amount of stone sculpture that survives from the pre-Conquest period of England.
Sarah is also leading new excavations at the early medieval royal complex at Yeavering, Northumberland, in North East England.
She was awarded the Landscape Archaeology Medal by the British Academy in 2024.
Sarah has also served as Honorary Editor for the journal Medieval Archaeology and Executive Editor for World Archaeology.
I am delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy and truly honoured to join so many distinguished colleagues in representing and championing the vibrancy and strength of archaeology, the humanities and social sciences more broadly, and their relevance for tackling the challenges of today.
Durham alumnus Richard Ovenden, OBE, Bodley's Librarian and the Helen Hamlyn Director of University Libraries, at the University of Oxford, also becomes an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy.
Richard, who has worked at the Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Durham in 2024.
I have always regarded the British Academy as the pinnacle of excellence in the humanities and social sciences. To receive the Honorary Fellowship means an immense amount, as it recognises the importance of libraries, archives, and the preservation of knowledge as a vital underpinning of scholarship. I hold this Fellowship for all librarians and archivists.
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1,800 of the leading minds from the UK and internationally.
Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian and China expert Professor Rana Mitter and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill.
Previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb.
The British Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.
Professor Sarah Semple staff profile.
About the British Academy.
Our Department of Archaeology is ranked sixth in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. Visit our Archaeology webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture.
Richard Ovenden, OBE, honorary degree.
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