Gillian online

Alumna develops new business in lockdown

When lockdown forced alumna Gillian Hovell (Classics, 1983), to stop giving in-person lectures and tours she came up with a completely new way to engage her audiences and diversify her business.

Gillian is known as ‘The Muddy Archaeologist’, who after a career at the BBC became an award-winning writer and archaeologist. She excavated at internationally renowned sites and lectured internationally on ancient history, archaeology and Latin.

With face-to-face activity on hold, Gillian began giving lectures virtually but also developed a completely new series of online courses in order to reach a wider audience.

Gillian said: “Faced with total loss of income for a whole year ahead for my in-person lecturing and tour lecturing, I researched (online) how to set up online courses. I have wanted to create these for a few years now but I've never had a gap in my event schedule to be able to do so. 

“After much searching I found the right platform for my guests but it took WEEKS of solid work before I could even start to input course material. I didn't understand most of the jargon - when I looked them up, I had to look up the words used to explain the jargon! COVID meant I had to work alone - no one at my elbow explaining anything. Then I had to negotiate the tangled web of copyright laws for 'publication' of images; my courses are richly illustrated and sorting this takes vast amounts of time for every session.”

Gillian was determined to make a professional series of courses that can be developed over the years, and this meant long hours of research and construction. However her hard work has paid off, with plenty of interested students joining her courses since launch.

Gillian said: “Making online courses fun, engaging, lively and full of passion can be a challenge when sitting isolated at home without the stimulus of a live audience, but I think of all the folk I know who are joining me and I speak to each and every one of them. It's simply a case of transferring that passion through a screen, and I guess my years at the BBC helped to train me for this!  

“It’s not the same as my live audiences obviously, you miss seeing the light of understanding or smile of enjoyment and the sense of discovery that I feel from folk in my lecture. The chit-chat, the smiles, the interaction are not there. However, I have really enjoyed being able to reach out to people around the world and will continue to develop this series even when my regular work returns. It has been a joy to share experiences of the ancient world again, and to be helping people to learn and enjoy themselves.”

You can view all of the courses online.

Date: 10 September 2020