Volunteer with NEAF
In addition to our Councillors, numerous members of the NEAF ‘family’ volunteer in ways that contribute to research, archaeological materials managements, and the activities of NEAF.
This is the essence of NEAF – that the volunteer efforts of councillors past and present create an environment of activities that:
- Share our love of NE archaeology with a broader public
- Create opportunities for engagement such as the Pella Project Volunteer scheme
- Inspire people to engage in supporting students, and research,
- Help us all keep the legacies of inspiring academics and teachers like Professor Basil Hennessy AO, alive within the university.
Meet Some of our Volunteers
Maree Browne –a former NEAF President, has continued to contribute lectures to the NEAF Saturday series, most recently in 2020 ‘Kashgar to Cordoba’ and in 2021 a magnificent lecture on New Kingdom Egyptian royal burials. ‘Ree has been a tour guide and is currently spending patient hours digitising photographic negatives and slides from past Pella seasons.
Dr John Tidmarsh is one of NEAFs bedrock volunteers – John Tidmarsh is a ‘ Renaissance man’ in many respects. A highly respected endocrinologist, John pursued his dream of archaeology in parallel, completing degrees and a PhD at University of Sydney with particular interest in classical periods, and the era of Alexander the Great and his successors.
He has worked and co-directed at Torone, and in Greece and Paphos/Cyprus. He is a co-director of the Pella Project in Jordan, led by Dr Stephen Bourke.
He has published many books and articles, particularly on the excavations at Jebel Khalid in Syria. And he will soon publish a major work on the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods at Pella in Jordan.
Many NEAF members will know him as a past President of NEAF, and is one of our hardest working volunteering tour leaders. His tours to Iran and Greece are legendary, and have inspired many NEAF members to support archaeological research.
With Maree Browne, John made the NEAF Saturday Series an institution we continue today. John has lectured regularly for NEAF and continues to be a supporter.
Jack McBride and Sue Walden have for many years been our NEAF librarians. Books donated to NEAF are carefully managed in the Vere Gordon Childe Centre (VGCC) Library.
Ros Buick spent several days during the COVID lockdown in 2020 helping prepare the Pella ceramic type series drawings for publication.
Sue Walden has undertaken to work, as a volunteer, to organise the VGCC library (which includes the NEAF catalogue) onto the Koha system so that the online catalogue can be available to interested scholars.