Sarah Lidwell-Durnin

I am a historian of archaeology, reading for a PhD at the University of Bristol. My work is on the work of the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans and his excavations at Knossos on Crete in the early 1900’s.

I examine Evans’s engagement with contemporary science, in particular craniometry, race and eugenics, in the contexts of human remains and of images of humans (i.e. frescoes, figurines) that he discovered at Knossos or later authenticated.

At Bristol, I teach on a range of courses including archaeology, ancient history and medieval art history, and I am a volunteer assistant at the Howard Carter archive at the Griffith Institute (University of Oxford), and the Sir Arthur Evans Archive at the Ashmolean Museum.

I have a particular interest in the ethics of skull collections and how skull collections were used to create and perpetuate theories about race.

You can find me at the University of Bristol here and also on Bluesky.