Meet Kirsty Owen, Lead for Aim 1: Delivering Archaeology
Kirsty Owen is the Deputy Head of Archaeology for the Heritage Research Service at Historic Environment Scotland and serves on the Scottish Strategic Archaeology Committee as the Aim 1 lead
My working day usually begins around 08:30, although I’m up and about by 06:30 to feed the cats and get my partner to the bus stop. The first hour and half is usually spent working through emails. Like most people in Historic Environment Scotland (HES), I get a lot of them! It’s usually a mix of requests for advice, updates and correspondence related to ongoing project work. I rarely get through everything. There’s always a bit of a backlog, but you learn to prioritise. Today’s first task is to set up a couple of meetings – a catch up with a local authority archaeologist, and a meeting with the Scottish Strategic Archaeology Committee. We’re in the early stages of discussing what Scotland’s Archaeology Strategy will look like post-2025, which is pretty exciting, but a big responsibility.
My role combines the management of archaeology projects with strategic working with partners and stakeholders. It’s not unusual for me to go from working on submitting a Scheduled Monument Consent application to managing human remains eroding from a sand dune, straight into a meeting discussing how archaeology can make a useful contribution to broader societal challenges such as the push for Net Zero.
Once the emails are under control, I move onto one of my bigger tasks for today, one of which is reviewing grant applications for HES’s Grants Team as an expert advisor. My team has a close working relationship with Grants, and we advise them to help to ensure that HES supports archaeology projects which demonstrate best practice as well as aligning with our corporate objectives. The applications I am looking at today are all from projects which have spoken to me and other HES colleagues in advance of submitted their applications, so I have a good idea of the content and will likely support them.
When lunchtime rolls around, I typically leave my desk for the gym. I am a keen weightlifter, and I’m usually at my best in the middle of the day. It also gives me a chance to move around at bit! My role does involve a lot of site visits and in person meetings which require travel during the year, but we’re into Autumn now, and I am spending a lot of time indoors at my desk.
Early afternoon, I meet my team for a catch up about the week to come. We’re a small team, but we cover a lot of ground and work closely together. We run through our diaries at the start of each week and talk about how we are feeling about our workloads. Although we chat through the day, it’s important to have these regular catch ups, so everyone feels supported (including me!).
I had planned to spend the rest of my afternoon working through my budget and checking all the codes and everything else is correct, as mistakes left unchecked will become a headache at the end of the Financial Year. However, I got as far as opening the spreadsheet before the phone rang – a report of human remains found by a member of the public on a beach. The report comes from a colleague, and my next phone call is to the local authority archaeologist to inform them, and to discuss a response. We check that the police have been informed as there is an established reporting procedure which we’ve all agreed to. Cases like this take priority over anything else I am doing on a given day, as they can be so sensitive, both in terms of time and ethics.
I try and finish by 17:00/17:30, but that can slip depending on what I’m doing. I find it easier to concentrate later in the afternoon, when things are quieter, but try and keep regular office hours. My role is varied and I love what I do, although it’s always very busy and I have to prioritise my workload carefully. It’s a cliché to say that every day is different, but that’s definitely true for me.