Roberts has been a member of the advisory board of Cheltenham Science Festival for 10 years and a member of the Advisory Board of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath since 2018. [24] This book is about Alice Robert's search for the Celts - who they were, their history, their culture, their art and technology. The author also takes a look at how much the current understanding of the Celtic World has changed in the past decade. For us to understand why our views of the Celts have changed so drastically, Roberts explores the archaeological discoveries, the ancient histories and new linguistic evidence. Roberts lives with her husband, David Stevens, and two children, a daughter born in 2010 and a son born in 2013. [74] She met her husband in Cardiff in 1995 when she was a medical student and he was an archaeology student. [75] [5] They married in 2009. [76] She spent seven years working part-time on her PhD in paleopathology, receiving the degree in 2008. [5] [7] [13] She was a senior teaching fellow at the University of Bristol Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy, where her main roles were teaching clinical anatomy, embryology and physical anthropology, as well as researching osteoarchaeology and paleopathology. [7] [10] [14] She stated in 2009 that she was working towards becoming a professor of anatomy. [15] Roberts studied medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine (now part of Cardiff University) and graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB BCh) degree, having gained an intercalated Bachelor of Science degree in Anatomy. [7] [10] [11] Research and career [ edit ] Roberts giving a public lecture for the opening of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in 2018

Roberts, Alice (2015). The Celts: Search for a Civilisation. Heron Books. p.320. ISBN 978-1784293321. From 2009 to 2016 Roberts was Director of Anatomy at the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery [11] and also an honorary fellow at Hull York Medical School. [19] [20] From an academic perspective, I have a few problems with Roberts' methodology, in that she never quite establishes how one identifies ethnicity archaeologically, particularly when it comes to ethnicity as a personal identity. That is to say that, while the book discusses at length markers that we might use, problematizes the evidence available, and ultimately settles on language as the central aspect of Celtic identity, Roberts does not delve very deeply into the question of how to understand 'Celticity' as a feature one attributes to oneself, as an identity that brings Gauls, Britons, and Galatians together (indeed, she even suggests that it does not), as opposed to something ascribed by others (whether contemporary or modern historians) or described by others (e.g. Caesar writes that the Gauls called themselves Celts, but does not establish how far the Gauls use this identity to link themselves to other groups). It is also, I would argue, a little dismissive of Tacitus to describe his work as 'propaganda' for the Roman elite, as fair a description as that may be of Caesar's works. Roberts' approach to the Mediterranean 'empires' is perhaps the weakest part of the evidence in the book, as she persistently refers to the 'Greek empire', which is not an historical entity. The 'Greeks' - almost as contentious a term as 'the Celts', if we are honest - were politically disparate for much of the period under discussion, and their regional and civic identities might actually provide a good parallel for the disparate, changing location and identity of the Celts. a b Roberts, Alice; McLysaght, Aoife (2018). "Who am I?". The Royal Institution. Archived from the original on 10 January 2021 . Retrieved 19 February 2021. Staff summaries". University of Bristol. 31 March 2009. Archived from the original on 3 June 2009 . Retrieved 29 May 2009.

Broadcasts

Interview with Alice Roberts". Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 . Retrieved 18 January 2008.

Roberts first appeared on television in the Time Team Live 2001 episode, [31] [32] working on Anglo-Saxon burials at Breamore, Hampshire. She served as a bone specialist and general presenter in many episodes, including the spin-off series Extreme Archaeology. In August 2006, a Time Team special episode Big Royal Dig investigated archaeology of Britain's royal palaces; Roberts was one of the main presenters. Tamed: Ten Species that Changed our World. Hutchinson Books. 2017. ISBN 978-1786330611. OCLC 1038452971. I discover that I am firmly before the 1989 watershed. I am to be treated to ‘a common culture that stretched from Turkey to Portugal’. If we’ve learned anything in the last generation of study, it’s that Iron Age Europe was by no means a common culture. Diversity in culture can exist between one side of a river and the other; between one side of Germany and the other – whilst we have great riches in Austria, we have a marked dearth of material in Britain. So this introductory claim of a ‘common culture’ made me distinctly nervous. I suddenly seemed to be finding myself in the 1960s.

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She is a pescatarian, [77] "a confirmed atheist" [78] and former president of Humanists UK, beginning her three-and-a-half-year term in January 2019. [79] [28] She is now a vice president of the organisation. [80] Her children were assigned a faith school due to over-subscription of her local community schools; she campaigns against state-funded religious schools, citing her story as an example of the problems perpetuated by faith schools. [81] Wills, Matthew (May 2022). "Professor Alice Roberts: oration". University of Bath . Retrieved 14 May 2022. This week BBC Two screened the first episode of The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice, hosted by Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver. The Celts is a subject I’m currently immersed in. Two weeks ago I was at the opening reception of the new exhibition at the British Museum, and I’m currently writing a big piece on Early Iron Age society in Europe for the new OUP handbook. I do hold a bit of a candle for Neil Oliver – I advised on an episode of one of his programmes just on the off-chance I’d get to meet him – and I also have huge respect for Alice Roberts, so I was expecting a lovely hour being told all about all my favourite time period, by two of my favourite presenters. Sadly I was disappointed. Professor Roberts is scrupulous in being cautious but does succeed in letting us know who and what the Celts probably, not definitely, were without getting caught up in stereotypes (I think the on-trend Vikings probably suffer the same modern interpretations).

So as one of this brave new generation of archaeologists, I was admittedly surprised – perhaps naively – when this story of my beloved Iron Age, opened with Rome. [Sighs deeply]: Will the Iron Age people never be free of Rome?Indeed it is far more logical to look at the way language and technologies spread. The advent of Bronze weapons, metal working, ore extraction - all these required skilled people spreading their knowledge. That required language to be taught. It does not necessarily mean invasion and displacement. Indeed there is little evidence for that. Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain. Simon & Schuster UK. 2022. ISBN 978-1398510036 Come the subsequent wave of Anglo-Saxon invasions (or settlement), near contemporary historical records do refer to the Angles and Saxons having to fight indigenous (let's be controversial and call them Celtic) tribes ... but described by these historians when translated into modern English as 'Britons'!