Dr Oliver Cox is Head of Academic Partnerships at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he leads a growing portfolio of partnerships with universities in the UK and internationally in support of the V&A’s mission to champion design and creativity in all its forms, advance cultural knowledge, and inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere. He is a historian by training and has written extensively on histories of landscape design and the country house.
Dr Louise Crawley has worked across the UK as an Historic Landscapes Research Consultant and is currently working as Curator of Gardens and Landscape History at English Heritage. Louise undertook her PhD and MA in Landscape History at UEA. She specialises in eighteenth and nineteenth-century designed landscapes, the history of garden visiting and historic perceptions of landscape. Louise is a member of the Gardens Trust Education and Training Committee.
Dr Caroline Ikin is a Curator at the National Trust. She has previously worked in museums and for the Gardens Trust and her research interests span nineteenth century art, architecture and gardens. She is author of The Victorian Garden (2012), The Victorian Gardener (2014), The Kitchen Garden (2017) and has written for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Garden History, Furniture History, Museums Journal and other publications, and was awarded the Mavis Batey Essay Prize in 2022.
Joy Porter is the 125th Anniversary Chair in Indigenous & Environmental History and Principal Investigator of the Treatied Spaces Research Group, University of Birmingham. See her ‘The Global Plutocracy and the Future of the U.K. Country Houses from 2020’ in Capital, Culture and the Country House in Britain and Ireland, eds. R. Connelly & A. Tindley, (Manchester University Press, 2025). Linkedin
Jill Sinclair trained in landscape history and design at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. She is a director of the Historic Gardens Foundation and has been editor of its journal, Historic Gardens Review. Her book Fresh Pond: the History of a Cambridge Landscape was published by the MIT Press and she regularly writes and lectures on aspects of English and international garden history.
Lydia has recently completed a PhD at King’s College London, researching the use of historic designed landscapes for entertainment and sociability in the eighteenth century. Her work seeks to highlight the valuable connections to be made between the heritage industry and the historic use and presentation of landscapes and country houses. She has previously worked as part of the Pevsner Architectural Guides production team and seeks to further her interest in the historic environment through work as a historical consultant specialising in gardens and landscapes.
Michael Symes is an author, lecturer and garden historian, specialising in 18th-century gardens in Britain and on the continent. He was based at Birkbeck, University of London, where he ran the garden history programme for many years, culminating in establishing the MA Garden History in 2000. For nearly twenty years he has co-directed the annual weekend conferences at Rewley House between the Gardens Trust (formerly the Garden History Society) and OUDCE.
A botanical horticulturist, now Chair of the Gardens Trust. Recently retired after 27 years leading the management and restoration of historic gardens and landscapes in the care of the English Heritage Trust.
