Brian Ayers

Brian Ayers is a Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia. He was Assistant Head of Museums & County Archaeologist for Norfolk until 2008. Thereafter he became the Chief Executive of the Butrint Foundation until the end of 2011 (for which organisation he continues as a consultant) and which works to secure preservation of the World Heritage Site of Butrint in Albania. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Society of Arts and is also a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. He is currently working on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project 'The Medieval Churches of Norwich: City, Community and Architecture'.

His research interests are the origins and development of medieval towns and their constituent elements including churches within the broad North Sea region. He has published numerous papers, principally concerning urban archaeology in general and Norwich in particular, and is the author of Norwich: Archaeology of a Fine City (2009). His book The German Ocean: Medieval Europe around the North Sea was published in August 2016.