BAC Executive
Hon Officers:
Mike Anson
Archive Manager, Bank of England Archive. Joined the Bank in 2004 as researcher on the Bank's official history project and was previously at the Business History Unit, London School of Economics working on commissioned histories of British Rail, and the Channel Tunnel. He also spent some time as an archivist at the former record centre of the British Railways Board. Editor of Business Archives: Sources and History from 2004 to 2011. Chair of BAC since 2013. Mike is also Chair of the Archive & Records Association Conference Committee and is external examiner at the Centre for Archives and Information Studies, University of Dundee.
Brian O’Sullivan
Brian O’Sullivan is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London. He graduated from the University of London in 1975. More recently he was awarded MA and PhD degrees in history from Birkbeck College. His book From Crisis to Crisis: The Transformation of Merchant Banking, 1914-1939 was published in 2018. It was jointly awarded the BAC Wadsworth Prize in 2019. He has held senior roles in a number of financial institutions, retiring at the end of June 2020. Until then, he was Chief Operating Officer at Thomas Miller Investment. Previously he was a Senior Vice President at State Street Bank. For three years to 2014, he was also Honorary Treasurer of a national adoption charity. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and of the Association of Corporate Treasurers.
Robert Osborne
Robert has worked for trade associations and other membership organisations for 40 years. He has held roles that involved managing regional networks, being membership director of a medium size trade association, and operations manager of several smaller associations. In each case he was secretary to various Boards and committees and at one point had 25 different committees or working groups to support. He has organised events ranging from seminars, conferences to awards presentations. Through his work he became aware that trade associations hold records of their business sector which can go back over 100 years and are usually inaccessible to the public.
Executive Committee:
Alix Green
Senior Lecturer in History, University of Essex. Entered academia after a first career in policy and government relations and specialises in post-war Britain and public history. She has been collaborating with the John Lewis archive for many years and has recently been working with a group of business archivists to produce guidance materials on co-designing projects between academics and business archives (now available on the BAC website). Serving as continuing judge for the Wadsworth Prize for business history this year. Fellow and Honorary Co-Director of Communications of the Royal Historical Society. Convenor for the IHR Public History seminar.
James Mortlock
James is the Senior Digital Archives Manager at HSBC. James has worked in archives for the past 18 years, the majority of that time at HSBC. He has led the implementation and subsequent development of the bank’s award-winning digital archive system. James has a keen interest in digital preservation and was a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition’s standards subcommittee for several years
Kate Murphy
Kate Murphy is a history academic based at Bournemouth University. Prior to her academic career, she worked at the BBC for 24 years. Her book 'Behind the Wireless: An Early History of Women at the BBC' (published in 2016) made extensive use of the BBC's written archive. She is coordinator of the BAC Wadsworth Prize for Business History.
Richard Wiltshire
Archives Manager at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives. Richard was previously Senior Archivist for Business Archives at The London Archives. He is founding member of the Crisis Management Team - cases including the Debenhams and Thomas Cook archives. Richard has also led cataloguing projects including Earls Court and Olympia, Standard Chartered Bank and Whitechapel Bell Foundry. He was awarded MBE for services to heritage in 2025.
Karyn Williamson
Karyn graduated with a master’s degree in Archives and Records Management from the University of Dundee in 2013 and is now a Registered Archivist. She has worked in various Archives across Scotland including the University of Glasgow, National Records of Scotland, Blair Castle and the University of Edinburgh. She is currently the Company Archivist for abrdn. Karyn is a previous ARA Board member, Events coordinator for the Business Archive Council Scotland and the campaign manager for the Explore Your Archive Campaign. Her research interests are outreach and education in the Archive profession and open source digital preservation