Symposium 2021 Speaker Biographies

Alison Oram (she/her) 

Lead researcher Pride of Place

Historic England

Professor of Social and Cultural History

Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Professor Alison Oram is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She has published widely on 20th century queer British history and on the representation of LGBTQ histories in heritage, especially historic houses. She led Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage for Historic England in 2015–16 and is co-investigator of the AHRC-funded project Queer Beyond London: Sexualities and Localities 1965–2010. Her books include Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-Crossing and Modern British Popular Culture (2007). Photograph courtesy of Ian Brodie @iBRODIEfoto.

Andrew McLellan (he/him)

Head of Public Engagement

Pitt Rivers Museum

Andrew is Head of Public Engagement at the Pitt Rivers Museum. His area of interest is material culture, how we use the things that we make to shape and understand our world. Over the last two years Andrew has worked with Hannah Bruce, and other Pitt Rivers’ colleagues, on the Beyond the Binary project, queering and questioning the Pitt Rivers’ collections. The project has tried to achieve permanent change in the museum through collections research, public engagement and a community curated exhibition.

Anna Niland

Associate Director

National Youth Theatre

Twitter:  @Anna0161 

Anna Niland is the Associate Director of National Youth Theatre and oversees their talent development programmes, which includes courses, the NYT REP Company and flagship social inclusion courses Playing Up and Stepping Up. She trained with the National Youth Theatre and at Rose Bruford College and worked extensively as an actor on stage, screen and radio. Anna was Creative Director on Shout Out Loud, an award-nominated LGBTQ+ themed site-specific show at Eltham Palace in partnership with English Heritage. 
Directing credits include Consensual by Evan Placey at Soho Theatre (as Associate Director), Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English adapted for stage by Gbolahan Obisesan at Ambassadors Theatre, William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Tom Stoppard at Ambassadors Theatre, You Can by Luke Barnes at Ambassadors Theatre, Red Riding Hood at Latitude Festival, NYT’s 2013 Season Highlights at Buckingham Palace, SLICK at Sheffield Park Hill Estate and Tits Teeth by Michael Wynne at Soho Theatre.

Benjamin Salmon (he/him)

Playwright, Our House
English Heritage 

Twitter: @BenjaminSalmon_

Instagram: @Benjamin_Salmon
Benjamin Salmon is an award winning playwright and actor. Benjamin trained as an actor at National Youth Theatre and as a playwright on Soho Theatre’s Writers Lab program. Other writing credits apart from “Our House” include Benjamin’s one man play, Blowhole, which is set to premiere in 2021. Benjamin was recently included on SISTER Pictures and Olivia Colman’s South of the River Pictures’ SCREENSHOT Commendation List of emerging writer performers who have the potential to offer fresh and exciting work to the UK television landscape for 2021 and beyond.

Dan Vo (he/him)

Co-Project Manager

Queer Heritage and Collections Network

Twitter: @DanNouveau

Instagram: @DanNouveau

Dan Vo is a media producer and museum professional specialising in queer history and inclusive museum practice. He has developed LGBTQ+ tours and programming for V&A, University of Cambridge Museums and Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd National Museum Cardiff among others. He has guest lectured at Central Saint Martins, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of Cambridge and the University of Leicester. He is a patron of LGBT+ History Month and trustee of Culture 24. He sits on steering committees at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Historic England and Imperial War Museum.​ He presented ‘Museum From Home’ and ‘Museum Passion’ on BBC Arts.

David McAlmont (he/him)

Performer, Girl.Boy.Child

National Trust

David McAlmont has collaborated with the University of Leicester and the National Trust on Girl.Boy.Child, a look at LGBTQ+ lives lived on National Trust properties for the Pink Award winning Prejudice and Pride project. David McAlmont left Middlesex University to sign a publishing deal and enjoy a ten album and counting pop recording career, which continues, most recently with the album The Last Bohemians; a Jazz FM Record of the Week, and the McHifi single, Bunker to Bunker, a Guardian Single of the Week. He scored a top ten hit in 1995 with the McAlmont & Butler single Yes, from the album The Sound of McAlmont and Butler on Virgin Records. He joined the faculty at the Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio in 2008, shortly thereafter recording an acclaimed set with composer Michael Nyman, the third British film composer he has recorded with including Golden Globe winner, Craig Armstrong and Grammy winning Bond composer, David Arnold. In 2012 he returned to higher education at Birkbeck College University of London. He has since lectured at the Wallace Collection and National Portrait Gallery.

Dominique Bouchard (she/her) 

Head of Learning and Interpretation

English Heritage

Twitter: @DrBouchard

Dr Dominique Bouchard is Head of Learning and Interpretation at English Heritage, where she leads exhibitions and interpretation, learning, publishing, digital curatorial, contemporary art and English Heritage’s national youth engagement programme, Shout Out Loud. Dominique is a trustee of the William Morris Society and former Director of the OutBurst Queer Arts Festival. Photograph courtesy of Deirdre Power @DeirdreAPower.

EJ Scott (he/they) 

Founder

Museum of Transology

Twitter: @EJScott2010

E-J Scott is a heritage curator and cultural producer whose practice employs a critical inquiry into whether or not raising the visibility of LGBTIQ+ narratives is queering the museum or museum-ing what’s queer? Their interventive curatorial methodologies include arts participation as hyper-localised occupation, community-led collecting and digital border disruption. E-J’s projects include the Museum of Transology (Activist Museum Award 20/21, RCGM), DUCKIE, Queer & Now (Tate), West Yorkshire Queer Stories (HLF), Queer the Pier (Brighton Museum & Art Gallery) and the Prejudice and Pride podcast series (National Trust). Photograph courtesy of Sharon Kilgannon @AlonglinesPhotography.

Hannah Bruce (they/them)

Project Officer, Beyond The Binary (former)

Pitt Rivers Museum 

Hannah Bruce is a community and youth worker, with experience working in both the heritage and voluntary sector and specialising in working with LGBTIQA+ communities. Their interests lie in inclusion, representation and creating/enabling spaces and opportunities for communities. 

Hannah was previously the Project officer for Beyond the Binary at the Pitt Rivers Museum and currently works for a charity as the project manager on a music project for young people. Hannah created My Normal, a creative youth group in 2015 who’ve worked with or created work / events for Oxford Pride, Museum of Oxford and Pitt Rivers Museum among others. Hannah is a queer, neurodiverse, person of colour.

Jamie Cottle (they/them)

Performer, Edward II, Our House

English Heritage 

Instagram: @biogal__
Jamie Cottle aka Biogal__ is a transfemme non-binary interdisciplinary artist and Our House cast member.  Currently they are writing and performing poetry, directing a trans-led production of Hamlet set in a swimming pool and making a line of handcrafted soft toys they call ‘BioTeddies’.

Joseph Galliano (he/him) 

CEO

Queer Britain

Website: www.queerbritain.org.uk 

Joseph is a fundraiser, journalist, former editor of Gay Times magazine and third sector ambassador manager who is now throwing all his energy into building an organisation capable of launching a national LGBTQ+ museum, Queer Britain. The vision for Queer Britain encompasses bricks and mortar, digital immersive spaces, story gathering and pop-up exhibitions.

Jules Bethley (they/them)

Performer, Queen Isabella, Our House

English Heritage 

Based in London, Jules Bethley  is an all round creative with a passion for performance and visual art- from acting to sculpting, they use their art to express their experiences as a queer mixed race person, and to centre and honour queer POC and black people. Jules wishes to give back to the community by creating a healing space through the use of movement for queer POC and black people.

Kris Reid (he/him)

PhD Researcher

Queer Heritage and Collections Network / Ulster University

Twitter: @Kris_Reid1

Photo courtesy of the Press Association.

Kris Reid is a PhD Candidate at Ulster University researching post-conflict museum activism within the context of LGBTQ+ heritage. In addition to this he has also written and delivers the monthly LGBTQ+ tour at Hillsborough Castle and Gardens, an Irish Country House in Northern Ireland that is an official Royal residence, as well as home to the British Secretary of State for the region.

Matthew Storey (he/him)

Collections Curator

Historic Royal Palaces

Twitter: @CuratorMatthew

Matthew Storey is a Collections Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, where he leads on LGBTQ+ research and interpretation as chair of the LGBT+ forum. He joined HRP in 2014, and works across all six sites. 

He previously worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he co-chaired the LGBTQ Working Group, and the National Gallery. He is on the steering group of the Queer Heritage and Collections Network, and Collections Development advisory group of Queer Britain.

Rachael Lennon (she/her)

Senior Programmes Curator, National Public Programmes & Inclusive Histories Curator
National Trust

Co-Project Manager

Queer Heritage and Collections Network

Twitter: @RachaeleLennon

Rachael is a curator, producer and writer, with particular interest in LGBTQ+ and women’s heritage. 

Rachael co-founded and led the curation of an inclusive histories national public programme series for the National Trust. In 2017 she developed and delivered Prejudice and Pride a yearlong celebration of LGBTQ heritage. In 2018 Rachael curated Women and Power, a series of exhibitions, events, publications and commissions marking the centenary of the Representation of the People Act and, in 2019, Rachael led the curation of People’s Landscapes, an artist-led exploration of activism and social history in the nation’s landscapes. 

Rachael is one of the founding partners of the Queer Heritage and Collections Network and founded the LGBTQ+ staff and volunteer network of the National Trust. Rachael has been a visiting member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford and studied in the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University. 

Rachael is currently researching feminist and queer histories of marriage ahead of a new publication in 2022.

Richard Sandell (he/him)

Co-Director

Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG)

Twitter: @RSMuseumStudies

Richard Sandell is Co-Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at the University of Leicester and Professor of Museum Studies.  

In 2017 he published a 10 year, international study of museums’ engagement with queer heritage and collections, Museums, Moralities and Human Rights, which explores how museums, galleries and heritage sites of all kinds – through the narratives they construct and publicly present – contribute to shaping the moral and political climate within which LGBTQ human rights are experienced, continually sought and fought for, realised and refused. 
In 2019, he published a major new international edited collection – Museum Activism, with Robert Janes, that explores the ‘activist turn’ in museum thinking and practice and makes the case for the socially purposeful museum.