Professor Marilyn Palmer MBE read History at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and then worked in teacher training before joining the History Department of the University of Loughborough and becoming its Head in 1983.

She transferred to the University of Leicester becoming Head of the School of Archaeology and Britain’s first Professor of Industrial Archaeology.

She was a Commissioner with The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England before its amalgamation with English Heritage.

She serves on committees concerned with her discipline for The National Trust and the Council for British Archaeology and is the Subject Adviser for Archaeology for the University of the Third Age, for whom she runs study days as well as a large Archaeology Group.

She was awarded an Award of Merit by the Society for Historical Archaeology of the USA in 2005 for her success in integrating industrial archaeology into mainstream archaeology and then an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2015 “for services to Industrial Archaeology and Heritage”