Jonathan Williams

From 1993 to 2005, Jonathan was curator of Iron Age and Roman coins in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, with particular focuses on Roman Republican coins and history and the cultural interface between Romans and Britons in late pre-conquest Britain.

In 2006-7, he co-ordinated the Museum’s international strategy. In 2007, he became Keeper of the Department of Prehistory and Europe.

Contact

jwilliams@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
+44 (0)20 7323 8209

Current projects

• Curatorial Project Champion for the forthcoming redisplay of the early medieval European collections

Previous projects

• HSBC Money Gallery, 1997, presenting the history of money though the Museum collection

• Rebels, Pretenders, and Impostors, 1999, on the political use of coins, medals, and banknotes by aspirant leaders

• From Alexander to Antony, 2000, celebrating the Hersh bequest of Macedonian and Roman Republican coins

• Brief Lives: Changing Europe’s Currencies, 2002, looking at the surprisingly short history of the various national currencies that disappeared into the euro

• Curatorial Project Champion for the Paul and Jill Ruddock Gallery of Medieval Europe, 1050-1500, and the Sir Harry and Lady Djanogly Gallery of Clocks and Watches, opened 2008-9.

External fellowships/ honorary positions

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (www.rhs.ac.uk)

• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (www.sal.org.uk)

• Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society (www.numismatics.org.uk)

• Board Member, ICOM UK (www.mda.org.uk/icom-uk)

• Member of the UK National Commission for UNESCO Culture Committee (www.unesco.org.uk/culture_committee)

• Trustee of the King James Bible Trust (www.kingjamesbibletrust.org)

• Director, British Museum Company Ltd.

• Honorary member of the Kingston Numismatic Society

Recent publications

J. Williams, Beyond the Rubicon. Gauls and Romans in Republican Italy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001).

J. Williams, Money, A History, ed., with J. Cribb and E. Errington (London, British Museum Press 1997; also published in USA, and in Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hungarian and Polish translations; 2nd UK and US edn, ed. with C. Eagleton, 2007).

J. Williams, 'Indigenous voices, archaeology and the issue of repatriation', in B.W. Cunliffe, C. Gosden and R.A. Joyce (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009), pp. 1001-28.

J. Williams, ‘New light on Latin in pre-conquest Britain’ Britannia 38 (2007), pp. 1-12.

J. Williams, ‘Coin-inscriptions and the origins of writing in pre-Roman Britain’ British Numismatic Journal 71 (2001), pp. 1-17.

J. Williams, LEGES ET IVRA P R RESTITVIT: a new aureus of Octavian and the settlement of 28-27 B.C.’ with J.W. Rich, Numismatic Chronicle 159 (1999), pp. 169-213.