About Dan Hicks
Dan Hicks MA (Oxon), PhD, FSA, MCIfA (born 1972) is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Dan works on the material and visual culture of the human past, up to and including the modern, colonial, contemporary and digital worlds, and on the history of Archaeology, Anthropology Art, and Architecture. His curatorial work has ranged widely, and has included the co-curated exhibition and book Lande: the Calais “Jungle” and Beyond in 2019 and Victor Ehikhamenor at St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 2022.
Dan’s latest book is Every Monument Will Fall: a prehistory of the culture war.
Dan has published nine authored and edited books, and has written articles, essays and op-eds for a variety of journals, magazines and newspapers, for a wide range of audiences: from the Times Literary Supplement to The Art Newspaper, Apollo Magazine, Art Review, Artnet, Architectural Review, Frieze Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Independent. Dan has regularly appeared on live Radio and TV news and in documentaries, including BBC News at Ten, Channel 4 News, Sky News, LBC, Times Radio, and BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, The Moral Maze, The World Tonight, Front Row, Today Programme and Making History.
Dan was the Chair of Judges of the 2023 Pen Hessel-Tiltman Book Prize. Among other appointments he has also been Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Archaeology at Stanford University (Fall 2024), Research Fellow in Archaeology at Boston University, Visiting Professor at the Musée du Quai Branly, Senior Fellow in Politics at the Free University of Berlin, Junior Proctor and Trustee of the University of Oxford, and a non-executive Director of Museum of London Archaeology. Born in Durham, Dan grew up in Bristol and Birmingham. He has been Curator at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum since 2007. For book publishing he is represented by Charlie Brotherstone.
Teaching and Supervision
Dan teaches and supervises students across Archaeology, Anthropology and Art History at the University of Oxford.
Over the past decade and a half, he has given tutorials and lectures for every one of the eight core undergraduate papers for the BA Archaeology and Anthropology: Introduction to World Archaeology; Introduction to Anthropological Theory; Perspectives on Human Evolution; The Nature of Archaeological and Anthropological Enquiry; Social Analysis and Interpretation; Cultural Representations, Beliefs and Practices; Landscape and Ecology; and Urbanism and Society. Dan has also previously offered two special optional papers for Art History and Anthropology: Understanding Museums and Collections; and Material Culture Studies. He is the External Examiner for Leicester University’s flagship Masters programme in Museum Studies.
Before coming to Oxford in 2007, Dan was Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology at Bristol University (2002-2007), where he created and directed the Masters programme in Historical Archaeology of the Modern World and co-directed the MA in Archaeology for Screen Media. Before that, in the 1990s Dan worked as a professional archaeologist in the local authority and private sector. Dan supervises masters and doctoral students on a wide range of topics, across world archaeology, heritage, museums, and material culture. Dan welcomes approaches from prospective Ph.D. students by email.
Prizes, Awards and Fellowships
Dan is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) and a full Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (MCIfA), and was a Research Fellow in Archaeology at Boston University 2005 to 2012.
Dan received the Oxford University Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015, and has also served terms of office in a wide range of Trustee and leadership roles: including as Junior Proctor and Trustee of the University of Oxford (2017-2018), Member of Council and Trustee of the Society of Antiquaries of London (2013-2016), Trustee and Delegate of Oxford University Press (2017-18), and a Non-Executive Director of Museum of London Archaeology (2017-2020).
Dan was awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2017. He was Visiting Professor at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in 2017-18, was awarded an Art Fund Headley Fellowship in 2019-20, and was a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University in 2024. Dan sits on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and Museum History Journal, and is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Bloomsbury Cultural Histories book series.
Dan has given a range of named lectures, including most recently the 2020 Schöne Lecture of Technische University, Berlin; the 2021 Strathern Lecture of the University of Cambridge; the 2021 Spence Lecture at Western University, Ontario; the 2022 Robert K. Webb Lecture at UMBC Baltimore, USA; the 2021 Goethe Lecture in London; the 2022 Bernie Grant Memorial Lecture at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre; and the 2023 Driedger Lecture at University of Lethbridge.
Research Projects
Over the past decade, Dan has been awarded more than £7 million in external grant funding, from a range of sources including Arts Council, Art Fund, AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC, British Academy, HEFCE, and Open Society Foundations.
Dan’s current research, writing and teaching is mainly focused on colonial legacies in all their forms, including the questions of restitution from Euro-American collections, the memorialisation of empire in the historic built environment and other aspects of ‘heritage’, and the enduring colonial dimensions of the history of knowledge created by disciplines like anthropology and archaeology. Beyond funded research programmes, during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns, Dan curated the 125-day #MuseumsUnlocked project, which was named in Parliament by Baroness Baron (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) as one of the projects through which the museums sector “has shown extraordinary agility in responding to the unprecedented challenges of Covid-19’.