Founders

Andrea Byrnes MA

Kate Phizackerley

Following an interest in art history and archaeology developed at school Andrea Byrnes graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MA Honours in Archaeology.

After university Andrea spent two years excavating and surveying in northwest England before transferring into the wirelsess communications industry.  From there she moved into website design, business process analysis and consultancy work.

She is currently researching a PhD at University College London, specializing in the development of agricultural societies in marginal areas. She was a General Editor and Web Editor of the Papers of the Institute of Archeaology for the 2006 issue. Andrea has also lead a number of tours to Egypt’s deserts.

Andrea has published some of her research on dedicated websites.  In 2004 Andrea started her Egyptology News blog which continues to provide news updates about anything and everything related to Ancient Egypt.

Andrea collaborated with Kate on the content requirements, design and organization for Egyptological and writes most of the copy

Kate Phizackerley received her first fee for a magazine submission before she left school, and has continued to write ever since with publications in an array of magazines.  Although she has a love of culture and writing, she chose to read mathematics and statistics at the University of Cambridge, gaining an MA degree.

Professionally, she has worked as a management consultant undertaking a variety of assignments in the UK and Europe, reaching partnership in a respected professional services firm.  She took time out for family reasons and is presently building a portfolio career which will allow her more time to write.

Kate runs the popular News from the Valley of the Kings blog. With her academic interest, Kate is drawn to the statistical analysis of studies of ancient DNA.  She also recognised the Manuel de Codage as an early “markup language”, which makes for the easy display of Egyptian hieroglyphs online, helping her to develop and release open source code which is in use on sites worldwide, including Egyptological.  Further extensions to her hieroglyphics work are planned.

Kate is our web-developer and writes the code for the Kandie Girls theme which drives the EO websites sites.

Photograph: Sarah Preece, 2011