Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2023

Following approval from members at last years’ AGM, this year we will hold our AGM online on 25th November 2023. This will enable all members, wherever they are located, to participate. Here we provide details of the Board’s recommendations for election as Trustees and some further details for the event.

Trustee recommendations for the Annual General Meeting

At the AGM on 25th November 2023, Dr Katharina Zinn will retire having served 8 years (one term and a further one-year extension according to Article 37A) and is therefore not eligible for re-election. Dr Omniya Abdel Barr, Dr John Baguley, Taco van Heusden, and Dr Campbell Price (Chair) will retire by rotation and stand for re-election. The Board recommend Dr Yvette Dzumaga and Hilary McGowan to fill two vacancies arising.

Short biographies of the proposed new Trustees are set out below.

To receive your ticket to attend the virtual AGM please book online. Please note that you must be a current member of the Egypt Exploration Society to attend the virtual AGM. Online voting will be possible during the meeting and proxy forms for those unable to attend live will be made available electronically. These must be completed in full and sent electronically to [email protected] or by mail (to: The Egypt Exploration Society, 3 Doughty Mews, London, WC1N 2PG) and received by 16:30 on Thursday 23rd November 2023.

Members' right to stand for election

Any member is entitled to stand for election as a Trustee at the AGM in accordance with the provisions of Article 33 of the Society’s Articles of Association, namely by giving the Society a notice signed by 1) the member who wishes to be appointed and 2) another member who is entitled to vote at the AGM, stating that member’s intention to propose the first member as a Trustee.  The notice must contain the name, any former name, service address, country or state (or part of the UK) in which he/she is usually resident, nationality, business occupation (if any) and date of birth of the member to be proposed; this is the information required to be filed at Companies House about directors. To be valid the notice must be received by the Society by postal mail or email ([email protected]) not less than 70 clear days before the date of the AGM, i.e. by Friday 15th September 2023.

Trustees of the EES are unpaid and must be prepared to attend (in-person or virtually) Board meetings and the meetings of any Committees on which they serve, and to give sufficient time to prepare themselves to play a full part in those meetings.

The Board’s recommendations for Trustees

Dr Yvette Dzumaga is a London-based artist and business owner, deriving her passion for Egyptian heritage through travels to Egypt & continued didactic learning. Yvette’s background started in medicine and business, completing her MD/MBA degree at Columbia University before moving to London in 2019. She initially consulted for early stage companies, focusing on fundraising, brand identity and strategic development. She found her voice as an artist in 2022, working as a blacksmith’s apprentice, and in 2023, exhibiting in Space21, an international art festival, the performance piece Lunch (Firavîn). Her studio, Y, is a concept art studio with multiple long-term projects in development, mostly exploring the shape of self / other in a consumerist society.

Yvette is keen to use her varied experiences to focus on EES’s mission to preserve and promote Egyptian heritage. She sees how deeply society cherishes Egyptian culture and history, and aims to support EES’s impact, so that it may nurture this innate fascination for ages to come.

Hilary McGowan FMA FRSA is a graduate in History from the University of Edinburgh, holds the Fellowship of the Museums Association, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Bath Heritage Services Advisory Committee. Like many of us, from the age of 7, following a visit to a museum, Hilary wanted to be an Egyptologist.

Hilary has a background as a museum curator who moved on to become Director of some of the most significant collections in the UK, in York, Exeter and Bristol. She set up her own business over 25 years ago and has since worked with over 120 museums and heritage organisations.  She now specialises in governance, leadership and supporting organisational change and is an experienced Trustee, after 11 years on the Board of Bletchley Park and 12 years with the Museums Association. 

Hilary has considerable experience of capital projects leading to the transformation of museums, including successfully applying for National Lottery Heritage Funding, as well as winning a RIBA Building of the Year award as the Lead Consultant for Creswell Crags Museum & Education Centre in 2010. 

She would look to use her clarity of vision and enthusiasm for museums and history to help the EES to continue to build financial resilience and to deliver a successful Building the Future capital project. 

Hilary is the co-author of Managing Change in Museums and Galleries: a Practical Guide (with Piotr Bienkowski).  (Routledge, 2021.)  They are currently writing Cultural Leadership: a practical guide to building an Inclusive and Sustainable Organisation.  She now lives in Somerset with her husband and two cats, in a house they rescued, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The Board's nominees for re-election

Dr Omniya Abdel Barr is an architect with a multidisciplinary experience in urban conservation, monument restoration and cultural heritage documentation and digitisation. She holds a PhD in history from Aix-Marseille University (2015), an MSc in Conservation from Raymond Lemaire Center in KUL (2004) and a BSc in Architecture from the Fine Arts of Helwan University (2000).

Her work is concentrated on Islamic art and architecture with a focus on the Mamluk period (1250-1517) in Egypt and Syria. Since 2012, she has been documenting the looting and destruction in Egypt and has actively campaigned to save Historic Cairo’s architectural and cultural heritage. Omniya has initiated partnerships with respectable international institutions and has set up the structure and funding of her projects. Currently, she is the Barakat Trust Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, leading the digitisation project on K.A.C. Creswell’s photographic collections, in partnership with the American University in Cairo, the Ashmolean Museum and Harvard University. She is also directing projects to rescue Mamluk heritage with the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation, in which she is trying to set up a structure to preserve the know-how in traditional craftsmanship and create a specialised centre in design to promote Historic Cairo’s arts and crafts.

Dr John Baguley MBA is a Fellow of the Institute of Fundraising UK and in 2016 received its Lifetime Contribution Award. He heads the International Fundraising Consultancy (groupifc.com), which he founded in 2000 to change the world. It now has offices in twelve countries.

His clients include the top UN organisations, international NGOs and game changers of all sizes and in all fields.

He has also developed the free Top Table breakfast discussions for heads of fundraising in the Gherkin, London and free First Friday fundraising clinics in several countries as well as Fundraising TV on YouTube. He is occasionally active on social media.

John has worked and lectured around the world and is the author of several books on Amazon.uk including ‘Successful Fundraising’, his guide for fundraisers of all disciplines, which is also available in Russian. His PhD thesis “The Globalization of NGOs” is published by VDM.

Taco van Heusden is the Chief Investment Officer of an Egyptian hotel and real estate developer and operator. Based both in Giza and London, he has been working in the country since 2011.

He started his career in investment banking at UBS and later moved to work for several institutional investors, always in the real estate space. In the last 10 years of his career Taco has focused on working with and for high net worth individuals in the development of hotels.

He has started and been involved in several entrepreneurial ventures and has experience in the automation of processes and information. He hopes to bring his experience in investments and property to the role of trustee for the EES.

Taco has obtained a BSc in Hotel Administration from the Hotelschool Maastricht and MSc in Finance from Nyenrode University. He lives in Wimbledon with his partner Livia and their three children Luca, Enzo and Raffi.

Dr Campbell Price holds a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, where he is now an Honorary Research Fellow. Since 2011, he has been Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, one of the most significant collections of Egyptian objects in the UK. In this role Campbell confronts daily the public (mis)perception of Ancient Egypt, and aims to explain aspects of the culture and why it matters today. His field- and museum work in Egypt itself has fostered links that he continues to develop. Campbell believes the EES is a key vehicle for both the connection of specialists and engagement with broader audiences in the UK and Egypt. A key question must be: why do we study Ancient Egypt and why is it relevant today?

Campbell’s work posing questions about Ancient Egypt – through publications, exhibitions, and on traditional and social media – has given him an insight into the needs and demands of variety of audiences. He would look to bring both strategic perspective to the future of the EES as an institution for British Egyptologists, and to develop its relevance and reputation beyond the Academy in Egypt and abroad.