The New Insights Conference is organised by Dr Emily Cole and Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner. 

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Emily is Senior Architectural Investigator at Historic England, based in Cambridge. She studied architectural history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and University of Sussex, and undertook research work and editing (including for SAVE Britain’s Heritage) before joining English Heritage in 1999. Until 2013, Emily was Senior Plaques Historian and Head of the Blue Plaques Team for EH. She edited and co-wrote the EH/Yale University Press book Lived in London: Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind Them (2009). As Senior Architectural Investigator – and joint Lead Professional for Architectural Investigation (2019-24) – Emily has undertaken research on a wide range of buildings and lectured widely. She is editor and co-author of the book A Concise History of Architectural Styles (A&C Black, 2002), and has also co-authored books on Stevenage New Town in Hertfordshire (Historic England/Liverpool University Press, 2021) and the Rotunda in Woolwich, London (HE/LUP, 2025). Emily’s specialist area, and the subject of her doctorate, is Elizabethan and Jacobean country house state apartments and royal progresses (especially those of James I). She has written articles on the plans and interiors of high-status country houses including Theobalds, Hertfordshire, and Bramshill, Hampshire, and is co-author of Apethorpe: The Story of an English Country House (Yale University Press/HE, 2016). 

Olivia is Chief Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Having studied at Cambridge, Yale and University College London, she then held a post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin. Subsequently she worked as an Architectural Investigator at English Heritage and as an Historian with the Survey of London. From 2014 to 2024 she was Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the V&A. Olivia's specialist area is the architectural culture of early modern England – her doctoral research explored perceptions of medieval buildings during the seventeenth century. As a specialist in architectural drawings, she is interested in the role of visual representation in documentation and communication. She has published on a variety of subjects from medieval wall-painting and early-modern antiquarianism to contemporary architects’ sketchbooks. Her most recent book is Owen Jones and the V&A (Lund Humphries/V&A, 2023). She has curated displays and exhibitions at the V&A, the Tchoban Foundation for Architectural Drawing , Berlin, and the Venice Biennale, and has broadcast for BBC Four and Radio Three. 

Image: Decorative plasterwork, Little Castle, Bolsover. Photographed by Richard Ireland