Staff profile

After a career in mental health services Dr. Liz Lewis took early semi-retirement from the NHS to further pursue a lifelong interest in archaeology. She achieved a first-class honours degree in Archaeology from Leicester University and was awarded the Alan McWhirr prize for the best undergraduate dissertation in her cohort. Liz also achieved a Master of Science degree with merit in Human Osteology and Palaeopathology from Bradford University.

Liz is now a PhD candidate and tutor in Archaeology at Durham University. Her interests include the archaeology of emotion, funerary archaeology, the archaeology of disease, and archaeological theory. Her main focus is on Britain in the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Liz is also very interested in the value of archaeological fieldwork for psychological wellbeing.

Liz's PhD research investigates how different groups within working-class populations in north-east England experienced emotion in the long 19th century, using biographical approaches to explore human relationships with a range of objects related to death and mourning.