Sally-Ann Ashton is Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where she looks after material from Ancient Egypt and Sudan. She studied Ancient Greek at the University of Manchester, and then Classical Archaeology at King’s College London, where she completed her PhD on Egyptian royal sculpture in 1999.
Since 2003 Sally-Ann has worked in a number of different prisons, teaching Black History. In 2008 she obtained an MPhil in Criminological Research from the University of Cambridge, studying the impact of accessing African and Caribbean cultural heritage in a prison environment.
Prior to working in Cambridge Sally-Ann worked at the British Museum and The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London and has curated a number of special exhibitions: Cleopatra of Egypt: from history to myth (Rome, London and Chicago 2000-2001); Roman Egyptomania (Cambridge 2004), and Triumph Protection and Dreams: African headrests in context (Cambridge 2011). She has undertaken archaeological/anthropological fieldwork in Greece, Italy, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Jamaica.
Sally-Ann has published widely on subjects relating to identity, cross-cultural exchange and African-centred approaches to Ancient Egypt. She is currently writing two books: Black history, identity and culture in English Prisons, and Origins of the Afro Comb. Both will be published in 2013.
