This is Archaeology: Coasts in Mind
Funded by the NLHF and delivered by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), Coasts in Mind (CiM) has been working with specific coastal communities around England to co-curate and map digital evidence of coastal and anthropogenic climate change. Using a specially designed online portal, CiM is preserving local knowledge, narratives of change and otherwise overlooked archival material, held in local and personal collections, in a way that can be downloaded as a dataset. In doing so, it is raising the profile of community heritage and its unique value in contributing to understandings of the effects of climate change, as well as for building resilience within the communities themselves.
This talk introduces Coasts in Mind’s methodology on a general level, before demonstrating its Humap built Mapping Platform and presenting a case-study of recent regional activities from work on the Taw-Torridge Estuary in North Devon.
Speaker biographies
Lawrence Northall
Lawrence is Project Manager for the MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) delivered public engagement project Coasts in Mind (CiM). Prior to this Lawrence worked on the CITiZAN project, where he specialised in developing research and engagement methodologies that explored the value of local/indigenous knowledge for better understanding & preserving coastal heritage. From 2021-2022 he held the position of Research Associate at the National Maritime Museum, and has worked on a number of other major grant funded heritage research projects.
Kit Ackland
Kit is a digital archaeologist working for MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology). Currently they are an Assistant Project Manager (Digital Delivery) for MOLA's 'Coasts in Mind' project, but has worked in the commercial archaeology sector for the last six years. In the past Kit has dabbled in most areas of digital archaeology, specialising in GIS predictive modelling, 3D recording / surveying, and Virtual Reality outreach.
Kate Shear
Kate is the senior community archaeologist in North Devon on the Coasts in Mind project with MOLA. She was a professional educator for 13 years before completing her master’s in archaeology. Kate enjoys bringing her educational experience to a new sector to help engage underrepresented groups in heritage.
This talk was delivered on Wednesday 17 June 2026 as part of the CBA's This Is Archaeology online lecture series.
