Ballot Archive

17 Feb 2022

Candidate Details

Candidate Name

Lara Maiklem

Academic degrees, honours etc.

BA hons Sociology and Social Anthropology, Newcastle University

Profession or occupation

Author, editor and publishing consultant (books)

Grounds for election

Lara Maiklem is a leading expert on antiquities of the Thames foreshore and the London stories they tell. Through publicity and sales of her book Mudlarking: Lost & Found on the River Thames (2019) – Sunday Times bestseller, Radio 4 Book of the Week, TED and Google talks, 2020 winner Indie Book Awards (Non Fiction), etc – she has brought ideas about responsible research and collecting to a wide public. Lara has been searching the tidal Thames for two decades. In 2012 she pioneered posting photos of her finds on social media as @LondonMudlark to share them with a wider audience (she now has over 200,000 followers around the world). She is, she says, “passionate about making people aware of the history they are surrounded by and sharing the stories of the objects I find on the Thames foreshore”. Her second book, A Field Guide to Larking: Mudlarking, Beachcombing, Fieldwalking & More (Bloomsbury), is a practical guide to researching the past – without digging or using a metal detector.

Signatories

The following Fellows have signed this Blue Paper