Launched in 2021, the OA Research Seminar series showcases OA’s work across all periods over wide geographical areas. The underlying concept reflects our strategy to use a research-led approach to our work and to engage creatively with a wide range of audiences: staff, colleagues, students and the academic world, curators, consultants and the general public. Digital delivery ensures that we achieve a local, regional and national reach.

The talks are presented by OA Project Managers and Project Officers. Each seminar is chaired by a respected academic in the relevant field, often an OA Trustee and/or member of our Research Committee, reflecting our widespread links with universities. They are supported by an expert panel of staff and external researchers who are able to answer questions in a live setting.

To date, six seminars have been presented. The first focused on Windy Harbour, near Blackpool in Lancashire, exploring the transition from hunter gathering to farming from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. The second meeting examined a key period of settlement pattern change across southern Britain during the middle Bronze Age. The third seminar dealt with perceptions of Iron Age farmsteads in East Anglia, Essex and the Upper Thames Valley, while the fourth compared rural settlement in northern and southern Roman Britain. The fifth seminar focused on early medieval cemeteries in south-eastern and north-western England, and the sixth looked at the provisioning of medieval towns across England.

Click the links on the side menu to read more about each seminar.

Our next research seminar will be on a post-medieval theme, yet to be confirmed but probably relating to some of our major cemetery projects, such as the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and Trinity Burial Ground, Hull. Watch this space for further details.