Dr. Paul Belford is an archaeologist who has excavated in a number of towns and cities in Europe and elsewhere. He holds a BSc and an MA from the University of Sheffield, and a PhD from the University of York. Paul’s main interests in urban archaeology are the development of early industrial centres at the end of the medieval period, and the creation and perception of urban landscapes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is currently the director of the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, a not-for-profit educational charity that provides regional planning and commercial archaeology services in Wales. Paul previously worked for an international private-sector heritage consultancy; before that he spent ten years in charge of archaeology in the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site. Paul’s formative archaeological years included ten years in various muddy holes in medieval and later urban centres in Germany and the UK. Dr Belford is a member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (MCIFA) and currently serves on its board; and was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in 2008. He is also a non-executive director of the Black Country Living Museum.
Since 2009, Jeroen Bouwmeester MA has been employed by the Cultural Heritage Agency as a senior researcher of medieval and early-modern cities. He studied the archaeology of Northwest Europe at VU University in Amsterdam. After his graduation in 1997, he worked as a senior archaeologist at BAAC and as director of Synthegra. During this period, Jeroen directed large-scale excavations near Zutphen (Bronze Age-Middle Ages). His research at the Cultural Heritage Agency focuses on the development of expectation models of (sub)urban areas by combining historical, geographical, archaeological, and building historical data. He devotes special attention to the development of houses and other buildings in relation to urban planning, a topic which is being developed further in his PhD research.
