Archaeologist. Project Maker. Knight Errant.#
Ash Lenton is a Doctor of Archaeology and an Associate Professor of Applied Cybernetics. He is a chartered archaeologist, a chartered builder, and an award-winning educator.
His PhD is in the archaeology of urban spaces, architectural design, non-verbal communication, and community identities (University of Reading 2014).
Ash has had a diverse career. He spent 14 years in design, construction, and project management. He has built airports, universities, rail networks, car factories, office blocks, housing, and power stations in places few have heard of. He spent another decade directing archaeological research and teaching programs, digging up Medieval castles, Roman towns, Saxon cemeteries, prehistoric monuments, and at least one Tasmanian pub. Ash works with local and indigenous communities, property developers, architects, government bodies, museums, and the media to make it all work.
Ash has an international reputation in his field as a compulsive collaborator in large-scale research projects. He was a leader of the ANU Archaeology program that won the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Education, and the lead researcher for the Australian Cornish Mining Site’s National Heritage Listing leading to UNESCO Tentative World Heritage Listing. You can check out his podcast Foreign Countries: Conversations in Archaeology here.
Currently, Ash is the Program Convenor of the Master’s Degree in Applied Cybernetics, where he expounds the relationships between humans, their technology, and their environments. He spends the rest of his time building cat adventure playgrounds around his house and experimenting with Medieval brewing recipes.
‘We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars’. Wilde, O. 1892.
Areas of Expertise: Educational Strategies, Research Ethics, Networks of Craft Techniques, Histories of Technological Processes, Phenomenological Concepts of Social Space, Semiotic Cues and Non-verbal Communication, Perceptions of Personhood and the Role of Artefacts in Personal Identity, the Further Roles of Artefacts as Secondary Agents in Social Structures, Colonialism & Decolonisation.