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Project Team

Dr Mark Westgarth, Principal Investigator (PI) 

Mark WestgarthMark Westgarth is Assoicate Professor in Art History and Museum Studies and Programme Director for the BA Art History with Museum Studies at the University of Leeds and was formerly Programme Director MA Arts and Museum Management at the University of Salford. His research interests include the history and theory of museums and galleries, the histories of the art market, and more especially the agency and the social and cultural identity of the art and antiques dealer in the 19th and 20th centuries. His PhD thesis, also funded by the AHRC, investigated the significance of the antique and curiosity dealer in the opening decades of the 19th century. His publications include, The Emergence of the Antique and Curiosity Dealer in Britain 1815-1850: the commodification of historical objects(Ashgate, 2018); A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers (Regional Furniture Society, 2009; republished 2012); ‘Florid-Looking speculators on art and virtue: the London picture trade c.1850’ in Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich (eds.), The Rise of the London Art Market 1850-1939(MUP, 2011). Mark is Director of the Centre for the Study of the Art & Antiques Market at the University of Leeds and is Board Member and Newsletter Editor for the Museums and Galleries History Group. He sits on the advisory board for the Burlington Magazine Index Project and is Chair of The Leeds Art Fund.

Dr Eleanor Quince, Co-Investigator (CI) 

Eleanor Quince is based in the History Department at the University of Southampton. She studied history of the fine and decorative art at Leeds University, before moving to Southampton to undertake a doctorate. Completing her PhD in 2003, Eleanor worked as a lecturer in Art History and Theory at Richmond, the American University in London, before returning to Southampton in 2005. Eleanor’s thesis considered the work of Gillows, a furniture-making firm working in Lancaster and London during the eighteenth-century. She was awarded a University of Southampton archival scholarship to enable her to undertake her research and make use of the Lindsay Boynton archive, part of the Hartley library archival collections. Eleanor’s work has always been interdisciplinary in nature and her research interests reflect this,encompassing art history and theory, furniture design and manufacture in the eighteenth century, the production, reception and display of cultural artifacts and the decorative art market. During her career Eleanor has taught architectural history to archaeologists; ploughed through quantitative data to assess the health of research within Modern Languages; set up training programmes for doctoral students; and investigated how to help Humanities students at all levels become more employable. Most recently, and in recognition of her work in the field of educational development, Eleanor has been elected Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Elizabeth Jamieson, Research Fellow (RF) 

Elizabeth Jamieson is Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and is also an independent researcher and furniture historian. She is currently researching and cataloguing the National Trust’s collection of over one hundred horse-drawn vehicles, the results of which will be published by Yale University Press in 2016. Over the past nine years she has carried out furniture surveys and written numerous in-depth research reports for the National Trust. The surveys were competed prior to new guidebooks being published, and the in-depth reports have assisted the Trust in re-presenting different showrooms, informing large-scale conservation projects, and in preparing Heritage Lottery Fund applications. Lizzy was formerly a member of the English Furniture Department at Sotheby’s from 1997-2003, where she was responsible for researching the furniture for the Bond Street saleroom, as well as for the top lots in the country house and single-owner sales. She was in charge of developing and maintaining the archive, which included extensive records on English houses, furniture makers and furniture types.  Before working for Sotheby’s Lizzy worked for Partridge Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery. She has an MA in Computer Applications and a BA from the University of East Anglia. Lizzy is Council Member and Hon Newsletter Editor for the Furniture History Society and has been Co-Director of the Attingham Summer School since 2012.

Mark Nicholas Wales, Project Software Developer 

Mark WalesMark Wales is an IT software developer and is project team member with responsibility for the construction and development of the Interactive Project Website. Mark is experienced in JavaScript and PHP driven apps. Recent projects have included work for Aardman Animations and the BBC. He has worked professionally, under the name of smallhadroncollider.com for the over five years, but has been programming since he got his first computer when he was twelve years old. He doesn’t know a great deal about antiques, but can occasionally be found watching the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday afternoon.