About the Research Team

Dr Aron Mazel

Following a long career in research and museum management in South Africa, Aron Mazel moved to Newcastle University in the middle of 2002 to lead the ‘Northumberland Rock Art: Web Access to the Beckensall archive’ project (rockart.ncl.ac.uk). After the completion of this project, he took up a lecturing position at ICCHS in January 2005. Aron Mazel’s research interests include the management and interpretation of cultural heritage, the construction of hunter-gatherer archaeological history, the absolute and relative dating of rock art and Northumberland rock art.

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Dr Areti Galani

Areti joined ICCHS in October 2005 as a Lecturer in Museum and Heritage Studies. Since 2008, she has also been involved in the delivery of the MRes in Digital Media.

Before Areti joined ICCHS, she was a Research Associate in Digital Heritage in the University of Leicester. In 2004, Areti was a visitor researcher in the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. She has also worked as an assistant curator in the Athens University Historical Museum.

Areti’s research and expertise are in the use of digital media in museums and the heritage sector, and especially the design, study and understanding of digital applications for the purpose of interpretation, learning, and exhibition design.

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Dr Debbie Maxwell

Debbie completed her PhD in 2010 at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, in the fields of design and computing. Her interdisciplinary research investigated the local oral culture of storytelling, outlining the connections between storytelling as a culture and new media, suggesting that designers should reflect on traditional heritage as a means to view contemporary design challenges with fresh insight.

Prior to her doctoral research, Debbie was involved in designing novel interfaces for large scale taxonomies for a virtual learning experience and mapping sustainability issues. She is interested in social computing and design methodologies, having explored ethnographic and autoethnographic approaches.

Debbie joined ICCHS in 2010 to work on the Rock Art Mobile Project.

You can contact or follow her on Twitter at @deb_max.

Dr Kate Sharpe

Kate worked on the Rock Art Mobile Project from March 2010 to April 2011. Prior to this she worked as a Project Officer for the Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Project, run by Northumberland and Durham County Councils and funded by English Heritage, which trained local volunteers to record rock art, and produced the England’s Rock Art (ERA) website and database. She is currently working on a similar project in West Yorkshire called Carved Stone Investigations: Rombalds Moor (http://csirm.wordpress.com).

When not busy as a ‘CSI’ Field Agent, Kate is a Research Associate in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. Recent publications include Carving a Future for British Rock Art. New directions for research, management, and presentation (2010, co-edited with Tertia Barnett). She also edits a newsletter on British rock art called Rock Articles. You can contact her at kate.sharpe@durham.ac.uk.