By Erica Rowan
Lisa Lodwick had an energy and a passion many of us can only dream of having. As a result, despite her short career, she managed to achieve an incredible amount both personally, and for archaeobotany and women in archaeology. Lisa had a very well-established career and it was about to reach incredible new heights when she passed. Less than a year before her death Lisa received the happy news that she had been offered a permanent lectureship in Environmental Archaeology role at the University of Cambridge. She could not wait to get started. She was excited about the lab facilities and the opportunity to create a new community of archaeobotanists through the training of MA and PhD students. There is an insufficient number of archaeobotanists, and in particular those who work on Greek and Roman period sites, and her contribution would have made a significant difference to Classical Archaeology.
At the time of the offer, she was already in possession of one of the prestigious post-doctoral fellowships at All Souls College in Oxford. While at All Souls Lisa worked on an enormous range of projects and collaborations, looking at archaeobotanical material from the UK, Italy and Egypt, and publishing over 20 articles and book chapters. She also continued her work on Silchester and made significant contributions to our understanding of diet in Roman Britain. Lisa was one of the co- authors of Life and Death in the Countryside of Roman Britain, which won Current Archaeology’s 2020 book of the year award. At the time of her death she was in the process of finishing a monograph on corn dryers in Roman Britain, which will be completed by a close colleague.
In addition to all her more standard academic activities, Lisa dedicated herself to her other passions; creating a more open, gender balanced and inclusive archaeological community. During the brief train journeys between Reading and Oxford Lisa would write Wikipedia entries for female academics. In 2021, she organized an AEA conference on open science practices in Environmental Archaeology. She was also one of the co-founders and the editor-in-chief of the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal, whose articles were all open access and whose fair and open editorial policies I used as a template when setting up my own co-edited journal. Within the field of archaebotany Lisa also strived to achieve gender equality and fought fiercely for the rights of postdoctoral researchers, many of whom live perilously contract to contract. At the most recent International Work Group for Paleoethnobotany (IWGP) conference in Czechia, Lisa’s campaigning for better representation for all career levels has led to permanent changes within the group’s organizing committee. The IWGP committee now has rotating membership for early career researchers.
Finally, Lisa not only cared about archaeobotany and archaeology, but she cared a lot about people. The overwhelming number of responses and positive messages on Twitter (a platform she loved) following the announcement of her death attests to the number of lives she touched during her brief time with us. She was an excellent networker and as many of us have discovered since November, Lisa was often the one who first introduced us to colleagues and future friends at conferences and seminars, and over coffees and drinks. A close community of archaeologists and archaeobotanists now exists because of Lisa. In addition, she always made time to help and provide guidance to both established and younger academics alike. She was happy to share her skills, knowledge and experience. It made her a great collaborator and an even better friend, and she is very much missed.
Comments
Post a Comment