Helen Strudwick

Biography

Helen Strudwick cares for the Egyptian collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum. She is PI in a project studying the Museum’s extensive collection of ancient Egyptian coffins, leading a team that includes Egyptologists, conservators, a historian of woodworking and a consultant radiologist.

Since 1985, she has been archaeological director of a Cambridge mission documenting private tombs at Luxor. This well-known site is endangered by theft, tourism and environmental damage. She is passionate about sharing information and works extensively with colleagues in museums in Egypt, exchanging experience and new techniques in artefact studies. She is a regular lecturer at day schools and events run by local Egyptology societies, and holds ‘pop-up’ events at unexpected venues in Egypt and the UK (recently at Cambridge United’s football ground).

As well as academic papers, her publications include The Tombs of Amenhotep, Khnummose and Amenmose at Thebes and Thebes in Egypt, The Encylopedia of Ancient Egypt and Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt, which was produced to accompany the 2016 exhibition of the same name that she curated with the Museum’s Head of Conservation. She is currently curating a new exhibition opening in October 2025.