Joe Docherty (Chair)
Chair, Arts Council North East Council

Joe Docherty is Executive Director, Enterprise and Development for North East based Home Group, which employs more than 4,000 people across Britain and has grown to become one of the United Kingdom's biggest social enterprises.

Prior to that Joe was Chief Executive of the award winning Tees Valley Regeneration, where he oversaw the signing of more than £1 billion of private sector investment into the region. During this time Joe also spearheaded a cultural and social renaissance programme - the iconic Tees Valley Giants - which includes one of the North East's most iconic modern structures, Anish Kapoor's Temenos.

Between 1999 and 2007 Joe was a trustee of The Baltic - a major international centre for contemporary art - where he was also Chairman of the Finance and General Purpose Committee. Joe also spent a career in banking, where he was a Director of the corporate banking division within Barclays Bank.

Joe is currently a trustee and Member of Council of the University of Durham and is Chair of the Council of George Stephenson College at the University's Queen's Campus, Stockton on Tees.

Kate Arnold-Forster 
Director, Museum of English Rural Life, and Head of University Museums and Special Collections Services, The University of Reading

Kate Arnold-Forster has worked in the museums sector as a volunteer, curator, director and consultant for more than two decades. Since 2002 she has been Head of University Museums and Special Collections Services at the University of Reading, responsible for the direction of the Museum of English Rural Life and the University’s Special Collections (including three Designated collections) and for the strategic development of the University’s other museums and related collections, where she has led a major programme of capital re-development and renewal. She has undertaken extensive research into the sector through the UK survey of university museums and collections.

She has held positions on a wide range of national and regional management, strategy, advisory and policy bodies. She is on the committee of the UK University Museums Group and is a board member of the ICOM Committee for University Museums and Collections. She is a member of the Women Leaders in Museums network supported by the Cultural Leadership Programme. She is a Fellow of the Museums Association and is involved in professional development for the Museums Association, as a member of its Professional Review panel.

Simon Chaplin 
Head of the Wellcome Library

Simon Chaplin works as Head of the Wellcome Library at the Wellcome Trust, which holds an internationally-significant Designated collection relating to the history of medicine and bioscience. He previously worked as director of museums and special collections at the Royal College of Surgeons, overseeing the Hunterian Museum, an accredited public museum housing the Designated Hunterian Collection; the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, a professional teaching resource; and the College’s significant fine and decorative art collections.

Simon has a first class honours degree in Natural Sciences from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and a PhD from the Department of History at King’s College London. He has published articles, conducted seminars, talks and lectures, and has appeared on several television programmes.

Janet Davies 
Head of Regional Liaison and Purchase Grant Fund, V&A

Janet Davies, Head of the Regional Liaison Team at the Victoria and Albert Museum, fosters and has an overview of the V&A’s UK relationships, particularly through subject specialist networks and the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, which she has managed since 1989. She started her working life as a curator at the National Portrait Gallery, leaving for museum studies at Leicester University before joining the V&A Museum of Childhood. Her career has focussed on museum standards, issues and the wide range of museums and archives in the UK.

Angela Doane 
Head of Collections and Museum, Royal Academy of Music

Angela Doane is the Head of Collections and Museum at the Royal Academy of Music in northwest London. Angela previously worked at the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory Greenwich, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Stanford University, Bonhams and Butterfields, and New York Public Library. She studied Rare Book & Manuscript Special Collections, Archive Administration and Preservation Management at Columbia University's postgraduate programme in New York City, before completing an MA in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has a background in exhibitions, collections care and management, information management, libraries and archives. Angela is a member of several professional organisations, including the Museums Association, and sits on a variety of advisory bodies.

Amanda Duffy
Formerly Information Services Manager, Westminster City Libraries

Amanda Duffy is a librarian who has headed the reference and information services in several London boroughs.  At Westminster she was responsible for the borough-wide information service and a number of special collections including the designated Art and Design Collection, plus the Performing Arts, Music and Official Publications collections.

She has chaired the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Information Services Section committee and is currently chair of the ISG Reference Books Awards committee. She has been a member of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Reference and Information Services Section committee for ten years and organises the section’s participation in the annual IFLA conference.

John Feather 
Professor of Library and Information Studies, Loughborough University

John Feather is Professor of Library and Information Studies and Dean of the Graduate School at Loughborough University. He had previously worked in publishing, and in special collections at the Bodleian Library Oxford. His academic and professional interests are in the history of books and libraries, and also in the management and preservation of libraries and archives. More broadly, he takes an interest in cultural heritage and in heritage institutions.

John has published more than 20 books and 200 papers and other pieces across all of these fields. He has served on numerous bodies, including the Arts and Humanities Research Board and committees of English Heritage, IFLA, The British Library and the Arts and Humanities Research Council among other organisations. He chaired the Library and Information Management panel in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise conducted by the Higher Education Funding Council, and is a former president of the Oxford Bibliographical Society. He has acted as a peer reviewer for research funding bodies in the UK and internationally.

John Marjoram 
Museums and Heritage Consultant

John Marjoram is a museum professional with 25 years experience at senior management level, managing multifunctional sites and departments. He has been involved with a wide range of curatorial subject areas including archaeology, natural science, social and industrial history and the visual arts.

As assistant director and then acting director of the Council of Museums in Wales (CMW) between 1999 and 2004 John worked strategically in developing policies, advocating and advising on behalf of museums in Wales to Government level including Ministers, senior civil servants and others.

Since 2004 he has worked as a consultant in the museum, heritage and allied fields, providing strategic policy advice, future planning, audience development, and a range of curatorial and collections advice to a wide range of organisations.

Edward Potten 
Head of Rare Books at Cambridge University Library

Ed Potten is currently Head of Rare Books at Cambridge University Library. He previously spent three years as collection and research manager at The John Rylands University Library, responsible for the printed collections and the imaging service, and six as Assistant Libraries Curator for The National Trust, responsible for libraries in the North of England and Northern Ireland. He has published on a broad range of subjects, including library history, provenance, printing history and the use of books in the fifteenth century. 

Mark Purcell
Libraries Curator, National Trust

Mark Purcell has been Libraries Curator to the National Trust since 1999, presiding over the belated cataloguing of the Trust's vast collection of books, and negotiating the loading of the catalogue onto Copac in February 2010. He originally read History at Oriel College, Oxford, trained at University College, London, and has published extensively on the history of books and libraries in early modern Britain and Ireland.

Christopher Webb 
Keeper of Archives, Borthwick Institute for Archives

Chris Webb is Keeper of Archives at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, after having worked there for 30 years. He has an honours degree in History from the University of Durham, and trained in Archive Administration at the University of Liverpool. He completed an MA by research (York Minster 1625-1677) a prosopographical study, at the University of York, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Chris has published extensively on the subject of Yorkshire and the Borthwick’s collections, and is the member of several professional bodies, including Yorkshire Archives Council and the Society of Archivists.