Dr Alison MacDonald

Deputy Director (Education and Student Experience)

Biography

BA (Hons), DPhil (Oxon), PG Dip (Oxon), SFHEA

Alison is the Deputy Director of the Department with responsibility for education and student experience. She is the academic lead for the Department’s taught provision and spends her time working with colleagues to help shape the academic offer across the range of open access courses and Undergraduate and Postgraduate award-bearing programmes. Her role involves ensuring that the Department’s provision is of the highest academic quality and accessible to the widest possible audience. She also leads on strategically important initiatives, taking care that all decision-making aligns with the Department’s Mission, Vision and Values, and the University’s strategic ambitions.

Alison has a BA in Classical Civilisation and Ancient History from Sheffield University and a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University. Her connection with the Department began in the 1990s when she organised placements for professional archaeology postgraduate students. She retains a particular interest in professional archaeology and is a member of the Board of Trustees at Oxford Archaeology.

Research

Starting her research career as a Roman pottery specialist, Alison has worked on a number of landscape archaeology projects in Italy, including the Tuscania Archaeological Survey, the Sangro Valley Survey and the Upper Esino Valley Survey. More recently her research interests have moved to Roman urban life, the study of material culture and object biography, and individuality and expression of identity in the Roman world.

Recent publications