BAC Executive

Hon Officers:

Mike Anson

Archive Manager, Bank of England Archive. Joined the Bank in 2004 as researcher on the Bank's official history project and was previously at the Business History Unit, London School of Economics working on commissioned histories of British Rail, and the Channel Tunnel. He also spent some time as an archivist at the former record centre of the British Railways Board. Editor of Business Archives: Sources and History from 2004 to 2011. Chair of BAC since 2013. Mike is also Chair of the Archive & Records Association Conference Committee and is external examiner at the Centre for Archives and Information Studies, University of Dundee.

Sara Kinsey

Head of Archives at the Nationwide Building Society. Sara has worked in the business archives world for over 20 years and joined Nationwide in 2016 to set up their archive service; prior to this appointment, Sara was the Global History Manager at HSBC. During the last 20 or so years, Sara has been involved in many business archives initiatives including teaching on the business archives module at the University of Liverpool; the production of the National Strategy on Business Archives; judging the BAC cataloguing grant and chairing the Wadsworth Prize for business history.

Brian O’Sullivan

Brian O’Sullivan is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London. He graduated from the University of London in 1975. More recently he was awarded MA and PhD degrees in history from Birkbeck College. His book From Crisis to Crisis: The Transformation of Merchant Banking, 1914-1939 was published in 2018. It was jointly awarded the BAC Wadsworth Prize in 2019. He has held senior roles in a number of financial institutions, retiring at the end of June 2020. Until then, he was Chief Operating Officer at Thomas Miller Investment. Previously he was a Senior Vice President at State Street Bank. For three years to 2014, he was also Honorary Treasurer of a national adoption charity. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and of the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Lorna Williams

Lorna qualified as an Archivist in 2005 and since then has worked as an Archivist in the Black Country Archives, Denbighshire Record Office, and is now Senior Archivist at the Bank of England Archive. Lorna organised the BAC annual conference, 2010-2011 and 2018, administered the BAC annual cataloguing grants, 2012-2014, and was editor of the BAC newsletter, 2014-2016. Since February 2020, she has held the role of BAC Secretary. Lorna was also a Board Director for the Digital Preservation Coalition, 2015-19.

Natasha Richards

Group Art Curator for Aviva plc, Natasha is a registered archivist and records manager (UCL 1998). She has worked with many corporate art and archives collections, including roles at Aviva, Lloyds Banking Group and Diageo.  Natasha also serves on the board of London’s Sculpture and the City.

Executive Committee:

Paul Beard

Postgraduate student currently undertaking an AHRC-Funded collaborative doctoral partnership researching the recordkeeping practices of charities and voluntary sector organisations in England at UCL and The National Archives. He has 8 years’ experience working in knowledge and information management roles, most recently at the Horniman Museum & Gardens. Previous roles include archivist at the Royal Opera House and Warner Textile Archive.

Alix Green

Senior Lecturer in History, University of Essex. Entered academia after a first career in policy and government relations and specialises in post-war Britain and public history. She has been collaborating with the John Lewis archive for many years and has recently been working with a group of business archivists to produce guidance materials on co-designing projects between academics and business archives (now available on the BAC website). Serving as continuing judge for the Wadsworth Prize for business history this year. Fellow and Honorary Co-Director of Communications of the Royal Historical Society. Convenor for the IHR Public History seminar.

Emma Markiewicz

Emma is Head of Archives Sector Development at The National Archives. Prior to this, she has fulfilled a number of roles at TNA most recently as Head of Collections Engagement. She has worked on programmes development for the archives sector, managed large volunteers and NLHF funded projects and served in both public and government facing areas of the organisation. She has a PhD in History and her research interests take her to many archives across the country.

James Mortlock

James is the Senior Digital Archives Manager at HSBC. James has worked in archives for the past 14 years, the majority of that time at HSBC. He has led the implementation and subsequent development of the bank’s award-winning digital archive system. James has a keen interest in digital preservation and was a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition’s standards subcommittee for several years

Kate Murphy

Kate Murphy is a history academic based at Bournemouth University. Prior to her academic career, she worked at the BBC for 24 years. Her book 'Behind the Wireless: An Early History of Women at the BBC' (published in 2016) made extensive use of the BBC's written archive. She is coordinator of the BAC Wadsworth Prize for Business History.

Robert Osborne

Robert has worked for trade associations and other membership organisations for 40 years. He has held roles that involved managing regional networks, being membership director of a medium size trade association, and operations manager of several smaller associations. In each case he was secretary to various Boards and committees and at one point had 25 different committees or working groups to support. He has organised events ranging from seminars, conferences to awards presentations. Through his work he became aware that trade associations hold records of their business sector which can go back over 100 years and are usually inaccessible to the public.

Helen Swinnerton

Helen has over 20 years of experience managing business archives. She spent 17 years in Hong Kong leading HSBC’s Archives in the Asia Pacific. There, she played a role in building a community of archivists in the region including as a Secretary General for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme. Helen recently returned to the UK and is Co-founder and Director of History Ink, an archives and heritage consultancy.

Ben White

Archivist at the Bank of England which he joined in 2007 following a stint at the Berkshire Record Office. Since 2017 Ben has edited the BAC’s membership newsletter; previously he was an administrator and judge on the BAC’s Arts cataloguing grant and the John Armstrong Award for Transport Archives. He is a former Chair of the Archive & Records Association’s Section for Business Records.

Richard Wiltshire

Archives Manager at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives. Richard was previously Senior Archivist for Business Archives at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). He is a member of the Crisis Management Team - cases including the Thomas Cook archive. Richard has also led depositor-funded cataloguing projects including Earls Court and Olympia, Standard Chartered Bank and Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

Karyn Williamson (co-opted)

Karyn graduated with a master’s degree in Archives and Records Management from the University of Dundee in 2013 and is now a Registered Archivist. She has worked in various Archives across Scotland including the University of Glasgow, National Records of Scotland, Blair Castle and the University of Edinburgh. She is currently the Company Archivist for abrdn. Karyn is a previous ARA Board member, Events coordinator for the Business Archive Council Scotland and the campaign manager for the Explore Your Archive Campaign. Her research interests are outreach and education in the Archive profession and open source digital preservation