I left university in 1999 knowing that I wanted a career in curatorial archaeology. After 20 years in Heritage Management at the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, I became head of the Advisory Services team in 2021. With its initial emphasis on field archaeologists, I always felt that CIfA was ‘not for me’. I’m happy to say that this is no longer the case, and with encouragement from my manager, I finally decided to apply for membership.
At the time of applying, I had only been in a managerial role for eight months, so I applied at ACIfA level. Choosing supporting evidence for my application was not straightforward, as because of the nature of my role I had not authored many reports or publications. Luckily, I had two excellent references both saying I was working at MCIfA level. The Validation Committee agreed and after sending additional examples of work I was offered MCIfA.
My advice to curatorial archaeologists applying for CIfA is to think more widely about supporting evidence. As well as my own reports, I included a training presentation I had delivered to external organisations, the CPAT Covid risk assessment I had written, and a report written by one of my team for a project I had supervised.
