Academic Background
MA (Cantab), MA, PhD (UCL)
I read Archaeology and Anthropology at Peterhouse, Cambridge before moving to the UCL Institute of Archaeology for postgraduate studies. In 2009 I received my PhD and was appointed Greek Bronze Age Curator at the British Museum. In 2018 I moved to the Ashmolean Museum as Sir Arthur Evans Curator of Bronze Age and Classical Greece.
Undergraduate Teaching
Classics: Homeric Archaeology, site/museum report & Special Thesis supervision
Postgraduate Teaching
Classical Archaeology (Aegean Bronze Age)
Research Interests
My research focuses on the material culture of Bronze Age Crete. I am particularly interested in depictions of animals, the subject of my 2022 monograph Human-Animal Relations in Bronze Age Crete: A History through Objects (CUP). I have been involved in fieldwork on Crete since 2005, first as a member of the Knossos Urban Landscape Project and since 2020 as co-director of excavations at Palaikastro.
Another research interest is the history of Aegean Bronze Age archaeology. I am currently working on digitising the Ashmolean Museum’s Sir Arthur Evans Archive. I have also worked on the archaeological discoveries made in Macedonia by participants in the First World War Salonika Campaign.
I was co-curator of the 2019 British Museum exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality and am curator of the 2023 Ashmolean exhibition Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth and Reality.
Links
See also Dr Shapland’s profile on the Ashmolean Museum website.