Researching in Cambridgeshire & Huntingdonshire

Else Churchill is the Genealogist at the Society of Genealogists in London. Formerly a professional genealogical librarian and researcher, Else has worked for the SoG since 1994. She is the Society’s subject lead, working across the organisation and runs the publishing programme. She was the recipient of the IHGS Julian Bickersteth Memorial Medal in 2023 for her exemplary contribution to family history studies.

Karen Orrell has been researching her family tree for 30 years and has been a committee member of the Cambridgeshire & Huntingdonshire Family History Society for 3 years. She has dug skeletons out of several closets including discovering the identity of her unknown 4th great grandfather using DNA (it wasn’t the man her 4th great grandmother had pointed the finger at!) and three previously unknown half siblings of her mother. She still has many closets for which she is yet to find the key – but the hunt is half the fun and new records are made available all the time, so she lives in hope!

Sue Sampson is Public Services Archivist with Cambridgeshire Archives Service, part of Cambridgeshire County Council and has many years of experience working within a local authority archive. She manages, and works alongside, teams at both Cambridgeshire Archives in Ely and Huntingdonshire Archives in Huntingdon, delivering public services and outreach. She particularly enjoys welcoming groups to the archives where they have the opportunity to go behind the scenes, learn about our conservation and digitisation work and view and discuss a selection of original records relating to their specific interest or locality.

Mary Burgess is the Local Studies Librarian for Cambridgeshire Libraries. She is responsible for local studies across the 33 libraries and 3 mobile libraries of the county. She manages the team at the Cambridgeshire Collection, the main base for local studies in the county at Cambridge Central Library. She loves outreach and does a wide variety of talks on all subjects. She can also be found out and about on our mobile library cargo bike, Bessie the Book Bike at local fairs and festivals.

Kevin joined the Department of Archives and Modern Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library as archivist in January 2023 with curatorial responsibility for religious, estate collections and miscellaneous collections. These include the records of the Diocese of Ely, Dean and Chapter of Ely, Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, Church Army together with estate records from Suffolk and Norfolk. Kevin previously worked for the British Antarctic Survey and also has experience in local government and the third sector.

Jude Rhodes is Chair of the British Association for Local History Outreach Team.

She is a professional genealogist, gaining the Advanced Certificate in Family History Skills and Strategies through Pharos Tutors and the Society of Genealogists. 

Vanessa Harding, Emeritus Professor of London History at Birkbeck, University of London, was Chair of the Historic Towns Trust 2022-26. A native of Cambridge, she was involved in the publication of HTT’s Historical Map of Cambridge in 2023. Her own research focuses on medieval and early modern London; she is leading HTT’s project to map London on the eve of the Great Fire of 1666.

Dr Paula Aucott is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth, her research interests include historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS), historical land use and medieval landscapes. She works with Humphrey Southall, they have been working together on the Great Britain Historical GIS project for over twenty years, and have been invited to present their research findings around the world. The main public interface to their work is the highly successful local history website A Vision of Britain through Time, which they continue to maintain and update.