SCHOLARS, CURATORS & THINKERS

Guided by Knowledge. Inspired by Discovery

Each lecturer is a recognised expert in their field.

Historians, classicists, artists, musicians, curators and scholars, share their insight and passion to deepen your understanding of the world’s most fascinating places, people and cultures.

Anne Harbers

Biography

Anne Harbers is an experienced presenter and writer on Art History and Decorative Arts. After taking degrees in Chemistry and enjoying a career in medical research and international business, Anne followed her heart and obtained an MA degree from the University of Sydney. A long-time enthusiast for 18th century European decorative arts and English literature, she is currently undertaking art history research projects relating to British and European subjects.

Anne Harbers

Art Historian

Brad Manera

Biography

Brad Manera is a Military Historian and Museum Curator. His career began at the Western Australian Museum and has included foundation curatorial work for the National Museum of Australia, gallery development at the Australian War Memorial and the World Heritage listing submission for the Hyde Park Barracks Museum. A keen public historian, he has led battlefield tours around the world and featured in a range of documentaries. His latest book, In That Rich Earth (2020), is a study of the battlefields on which men and women of New South Wales have served from colonial times to the present.

Brad Manera

Military Historian

Prof. Carol Reynolds

Biography

Prof. Carol Reynolds is a musicologist who specialises in Russian, East European, and German cultural history. Carol spends much of her time as a curriculum developer, and consultant engaged in the revival of Classical Education. With her husband Hank, a music theorist and copyright attorney, she has written books and created courses in history and the Fine Arts. She works closely with Memoria Press, Classical Academic Press, the Circe Institute, and teaches in a Great Books Masters’ Program at Memoria College.

Prof. Carol Reynolds

Musicologist

Dr Chris Carter

Biography

Dr Chris Carter is a historical archaeologist with over 25 years’ experience leading tours both nationally and overseas. He has a BA (Hons), MA and PhD from the Australian National University. His PhD research was based on excavations he carried out at coastal sites in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. As a teacher, Chris has always declared that archaeology cannot be learned in the classroom. Such statements resulted in him taking a group to South America in 1995. He has continued to lead several tours a year ever since. The areas visited have expanded to other regions that reflect the subjects he teaches.

Dr Christopher Carter

Historical Archaeologist

Christopher Menz

Biography

Christopher Menz is a former art museum director and curator and has been leading cultural tours in Europe, the United States and Australia since 2013. He has considerable expertise and interest in the visual arts and music. Christopher is a former director of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Before that he was a curator, specialising in decorative arts, and worked at the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, and National Gallery of Victoria. He has published and lectured extensively on Australian and European decorative arts, notably on the design work of William Morris, and curated numerous exhibitions. Christopher is based in Melbourne where he is an art consultant and valuer, and Development Consultant for Australian Book Review.

Christopher Menz

Curator & Art Historian

Dr Eireann Marshall

Biography

Eireann is an Honorary Research Associate and Associate Lecturer with The Open University. Raised in the Veneto and educated at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter, she brings a rich international perspective to classical civilisation. With extensive experience as a lecturer and tour leader across Italy, Tunisia, Sicily and beyond including Venice, Pompeii and Ravenna – Eireann is bilingual in English and Italian, and combines scholarly rigour with engaging storytelling. Her lectures for Academy Travel invite listeners to explore the ancient world not just as history but as a living dialogue between past and present – bringing monuments, art and ideas vividly to life.

Dr Eireann Marshall

Classicist & Historian

Dr John Tidmarsh

Biography

John has a BA (Hons), MA (Hons) and PhD from the University of Sydney where he was previously tutor, then part-time lecturer in Classical Archaeology. He is a former President of the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation at that university. John was also the former Chairman for the Executive Committee of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.

Dr John Tidmarsh

Archaeologist

Judy Tenzing

Biography

Judy Tenzing is a historian with a passion for all things South Asian – India, the Himalaya, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Judy has a degree in South Asian History as well as post graduate qualifications in secondary teaching. She has taught at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education, U3A, COFA, the Jane Austen Society and more – offering courses in the histories, cultures, textiles and faiths of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Taiwan and Myanmar. Judy led her first tour for Academy Travel in 2012 and has been a regular leader since then, accompanying groups to India, Myanmar, Bhutan, Taiwan, Japan and Sri Lanka.

Judy Tenzing

Historian

Kate Bolton-Porciatti

Biography

Kate Bolton-Porciatti (MPhil.) is a professor of Italian cultural history at the Istituto Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures regularly at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Academy in Siena. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She has published extensively as an academic, a critic and a journalist. Her MPhil thesis set the music of early 15th-century Florence in its social and cultural context.

Kate Bolton-Porciatti

Cultural Historian

Dr Lauren Mackay

Biography

Dr Lauren Mackay is an historian, author, lecturer and consultant, with a B.Mus from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music/University of Sydney, Australia, a Masters of History from the University of New England, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research explores the interconnected worlds of the Early Modern period, from the courts of Tudor England and the famed Habsburgs, to the Ottoman Empire, and the global reach of European expansion into the New World. Lauren is also the author of three books, and her fourth, Thunder Through the Realms: Five Kingdoms and the Shaping of Early Modern Europe, is due out in 2025 with Bloomsbury Publishing. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has lectured throughout the UK, at venues including Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Sudeley Castle, Hever Castle, Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, The National Archives, Kew, The Portrait Gallery, London, and the BBC History weekends.

Dr Lauren Mackay

Historian

Lucia Gahlin

Biography

Lucia Gahlin is an Egyptologist based in the UK with over 20 years experience of leading tours to Egypt, and to collections of Egyptian antiquities in museums around the world. She has a strong personal interest in the art, archaeology, literature and architecture of ancient Egypt, and is the author of chapters and books, such as ‘Egypt: gods, myths and religion’. Lucia holds a First Class Honours Degree in Egyptology/Ancient History from University College London. Her postgraduate research took her into university teaching, curatorial work in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, and archaeological excavations in Egypt. She has taught Egyptology for the Continuing Education departments of a number of universities in the UK, and has taught undergraduates at University College London and the Universities of Warwick and Bristol. Lucia is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology. She continues to teach occasional continuing education courses in Bristol, and lectures widely.

Lucia Gahlin

Egyptologist

Patrick Bade

Biography

Patrick Bade holds a BA in History and History of Art from University College London and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute. For many years until 2016 he was senior lecturer at Christies Education (in conjunction with Glasgow University). He has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery and V&A Museum, and has taught courses on Fine and Decorative Arts Renaissance to 20th century as well as course on the history of opera. He has led many tours to Paris, Munich and Vienna and to other German cities, Brussels, Barcelona and Madrid and opera tours to Milan and Parma.

Patrick Bade

Art Historian

Prof. Richard Bell

Biography

Professor Richard Bell received a BA from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Harvard University. He joined the Department of History and the University of Maryland in 2006, earned tenure in 2012 and promotion to the rank of full professor in 2020. Rick is also a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, an elected member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and as a board member of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System Foundation.

Prof Richard Bell

Historian

Sandy Burnett

Biography

Sandy Burnett is one of the UK’s most authoritative broadcasters in the field of classical music. His broadcasts, interviews, and lectures are all underpinned by the hands-on experience of being a practising musician. Since 2017, Sandy has been an accredited Arts Society lecturer, his talks aimed at unlocking the worlds of classical music and jazz to general arts-loving audiences; his busy diary of speaking engagements takes him right across the world. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3; his broadcasting work was admired and appreciated by many classical music lovers.

Sandy Burnett

Musician & Broadcaster

Thomas Abbott

Biography

Thomas Abbott is a specialist in architectural history from the Baroque to the present day, with a wide knowledge of the fine and performing arts. He has an intimate knowledge of Germany, residing in Berlin since 1987, making him the ideal interpreter of the language, the history and the culture of this unique country. Thomas graduated in ‘Psychology and Art History’ from Carleton College, Minnesota, and completed his graduate studies in the ‘History of Art and Architecture’ at the Technical University of Berlin (Honours) with an emphasis on both Roman and German art and architecture.

Thomas Abbott

Historian

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