I started my studies at UBC in the late 60s in Classical Studies with a special interest in archaeology. This provided my first field opportunity when I went on a UBC-UofT excavation in southern Turkey. After that my single goal was to go abroad for good and do archaeology – which is what I did. After wandering around the Mediterranean for a while I shifted to Asia, specifically Hong Kong. The archaeology of the region appealed to me because it was relatively under-developed and seemed full of possibilities. It was the beginning of almost 50 years of living and working in Asia during which I did an MA (Archaeology and Ancient History at University of Birmingham 1980) and my PhD (Archaeology at University College London 2000).

Between 1978 and 1981 I was fortunate to do field work with a life-long colleague on a long-term archaeological project in South Thailand. Working with the maritime adapted indigenous people of the Phuket islands has been one of my great joys for more than 40 years. Some projects can change your life without warning.

There were big gaps between my studies because I spent most of the 1980s having a family and the 1990s starting Hong Kong’s first and longest-lived archaeological consultancy company. I became increasingly involved in the heritage system in Hong Kong, working on the Antiquities Advisory Board and the Town Planning Board – the beginning of my interest in how heritage is defined, managed and protected.

Starting around 2000 I began my continuing involvement with UNESCO Asia-Pacific and other international agencies, doing projects around the region. This gave me a wonderful opportunity to live and work in many parts of Asia doing a wide range of projects and studies, from integrating archaeology and demining unexploded landmines in Northern Laos to conducting environmental assessments for a prehistoric urban site in Western China.

In 2006 I moved to Lahore, Pakistan and began teaching in earnest for the first time as Foreign Faculty Professor at the National College of Arts. I began a department in Heritage Management and worked at the College for more than a decade. I also set up another consultancy with Pakistani colleagues and had the good fortune to carry out numerous projects such as a pioneering impact assessment for the thousands of rock carvings to be flooded on the upper Indus River, planning for Lahore’s Mass Transit and a UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape pilot project in the historic centre of Rawalpindi.

In 2022 I left Pakistan to settle here in Prince George and take on a new challenge as an Adjunct Professor at UNBC.