Collections responsibility: Supporting the curators of Asia; working with collections from Asia.

Research interest: Museological collaborations with source communities; original repairs and re-used objects found in world cultures collections; ethical issues surrounding the collecting and restitution of World Cultures collections; Northwest Coast art.

Heather graduated with a BA(Hons) degree in Conservation and Restoration from De Montfort University, Lincoln in 1998, completing her dissertation on the conservation of totem poles. During her studies she undertook an internship at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada. She spent a year at Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen from 1998-1999 as Historic Scotland Conservation Bureau intern in Ethnographic Conservation. Heather then undertook short contracts at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter and the British Museum conserving organic World Cultures collections.

In 2000 Heather spent 3-months at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC under the Andrew W Mellon Fellowship scheme, where she worked on the exhibition Beauty, Honour and Tradition: The Legacy of Plains Indian Shirts.

Heather joined the conservation department of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford in 2001, becoming Head of Conservation in 2008 until 2016. She became an Accredited Conservator Restorer (ACR) in 2007. While at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Heather regularly worked with source communities to re-engage with their material culture, including Haida and Māori groups. In 2010 Heather travelled to Alberta, Canada, with five Plains hide shirts to facilitate handling workshops with Blackfoot communities. She was co-recipient of the Michael M Ames Award for Innovative Museum Anthropology in 2011 for her work on the Blackfoot Shirts Project. In 2013 she was invited to be an adviser on ‘Cultures of Conservation’, a five-year project at Bard Graduate Center, NYC.