Roberta Gilchrist is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading. A pioneer of gender and life course studies in archaeology, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2008, voted Current Archaeology's 'Archaeologist of the Year' in 2016, and became an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge in 2018. She is the author of several books, including Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (2013) and Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (1993).