About the Speaker

Paula Aucott

Dr Paula Aucott is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth, her research interests include historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS), historical land use and medieval landscapes. She works with Humphrey Southall, they have been working together on the Great Britain Historical GIS project for over twenty years, and have been invited to present their research findings around the world. The main public interface to their work is the highly successful local history website A Vision of Britain through Time, which they continue to maintain and update.

About the Speaker

Vanessa Harding

Vanessa Harding is Emeritus Professor of London History at Birkbeck, University of London. She works on medieval and early modern London and aspects of its population, environment, health, mortality, and burial practices. She is currently Chair of the Historic Towns Trust, and contributed to their maps of Medieval London and Tudor London c. 1520.  She is now working on a project to map metropolitan London on the eve of the Great Fire of 1666.

About the Speaker

Else Churchill

Else Churchill is the Genealogist at the Society of Genealogists in London. Formerly a professional genealogical librarian and researcher, Else has worked for the SoG since 1994. She is the Society’s subject lead, working across the organisation and runs the publishing programme. She was the recipient of the IHGS Julian Bickersteth Memorial Medal in 2023 for her exemplary contribution to family history studies.

About the Speaker

Judith Berry

Judith Berry is the Head of Suffolk Archives and The Hold, part of Suffolk County Council.  She has worked in the archives sector for 24 years, starting her career in Suffolk in 2004 as the archivist at the Bury St Edmunds branch. Her current role involves managing and overseeing all aspects of the Suffolk Archives service, including the nationally recognised audience development programme.        

About the Speaker

Andy Kerridge

Andy Kerridge is chair of Suffolk Family History Society, a role he took on after a few years as membership secretary.  However he has been a member since the early 1990s.  The Society has around 1500 members, most of whom are in Suffolk, but there are members across the globe.

About the Speaker

Christopher Broom

A native of Hackney, London, Chris studied modern languages at Nottingham University in the early 1970s, before embarking on a 40-year-career in Banking.

Prior to his ‘retirement’, Chris’s interest in family history was sparked by a request from his father to find his biological parents. Chris describes genealogy as an all-consuming passion upon which he now spends most of his waking hours, leaving his wife to joke that she is a ‘genealogy widow’.

Chris is a graduate of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Canterbury, where he spent five years as a course tutor. He also runs a family history research and education business (www.chance-encounters.co.uk) from his home in Suffolk, specialising in East Anglia and Heraldry.  In addition, he is a member of the Register of Qualified Genealogists and has been Chairman of the Alde Valley Suffolk Family History Group since 2020.