Who we are

Migration Museum Project – Who we are

  • Barbara Roche Chair of the Migration Museum Project

    Barbara Roche is a former Government Minister and MP who was a Minister of State in the Home Office, Cabinet Office and ODPM. She was also Financial Secretary to the Treasury and a DTI Minister. As Minister of State at the Home Office she was the Immigration Minister and has been a long-standing advocate of the need for a National Migration Museum.

    At the Cabinet Office and ODPM Barbara was the Minister for Women and Equalities and responsible for the Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal Units. She has extensive European experience – chairing the EU Telecoms Council and representing the UK on the Home Affairs Ministerial Council.

    Barbara now works as a freelance consultant with major corporations, is chair of one of the largest national housing associations and a visiting university professor.

  • Jill Rutter Vice-Chair of the Migration Museum Project

    Jill Rutter is Head of Research at Daycare Trust, formerly Head of Policy and Communications at Refugee and Migrant Justice, and an Associate Fellow in Migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research where she worked between 2007 and 2009. At IPPR Jill managed the research that scoped the Migration Museum and also undertook a refugee oral history project.

    Prior to joining IPPR, Jill was Senior Lecturer and Course Director in Citizenship Education at London Metropolitan University . She has also been a secondary school teacher and also worked in the policy team at the Refugee Council for 13 years. She has published extensively on all aspects of the refugee experience in the UK and abroad with well over 80 books, chapters, and papers on the issue. She has worked with a number of museums and archival collections to develop educational work on migration and contributed to the educational work of the ‘Peopling of London’ exhibition.

  • Sophie Henderson Director of the Migration Museum Project

    Sophie Henderson practised as an immigration barrister for many years, latterly at Tooks Court, Chambers of Michael Mansfield QC, specialising in all areas of immigration, asylum and human rights law. She is a trustee of Our Hut, a charity that delivers architecture-based workshops in schools. Sophie has been managing the Migration Museum Project full time since January 2011 and was appointed to the role of Director in October 2012.

  • John Orna-Ornstein Trustee

    John Orna-Ornstein is Head of National Programmes at the British Museum and works with museums and galleries in every part of the UK. His 15 years at the BM have included roles ranging from curatorial to education to management and he has also worked in the international development industry.

    John is a board member of the Museums Association, International Council of Museums UK and the London Museums Group. He is a fellow of the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme 2012/13.

  • Ratan Vaswani Trustee

    Born in Nigeria of Indian parents, Ratan Vaswani grew up in Manchester. His academic background is in Russian and Slavic Studies. He taught languages in schools, colleges and universities in Spain, France, Russia and the UK. In his late thirties he had a career change and entered the world of museums.

    He has an MA in Gallery Studies from the University of Essex and volunteered at the Geffrye Museum and the Museum of London. He joined the Museums Association in 1999 as its first Ethics Adviser and then went on to lead its Professional Development department. He delivered UK wide training for the Association on professional development and ethical issues. For four years he wrote a popular monthly column in Museums Journal. He later became the Association’s Head of Events, responsible for developing its programme of conferences and training courses. In 2009, Ratan worked at the Geffyre Museum, leading the museum’s contribution to Stories of the World, a set of creative youth projects taking place across the UK as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad before moving on to become Events Manager at the Wellcome Collection. He now works freelance.

  • Robert Winder Trustee

    Robert Winder has been deputy editor of Granta and was literary editor of the Independent for five years. He is the best-selling author of Bloody Foreigners: the story of immigration to Britain, of which a second edition is due for publication in 2013. He has also written books about cricket, golf and three novels. He is a regular contributor to the Independent, the Observer and the New Statesman.

  • Zelda Baveystock Trustee

    Zelda Baveystock is Lecturer in Arts Management, Cultural Policy & Museum Studies at the University of Manchester.

    She has extensive experience in the capital development of history museums from her previous role as acting deputy director at the Museum of Liverpool, where she managed the delivery of content for this new £72 million museum on the banks of the River Mersey. As Senior Keeper of History at Tyne and Wear Museums she was part of the team that led the £13 million redevelopment of Discovery Museum in Newcastle, transforming it into one of the most popular free family museums in the north-east.

    Zelda’s interest in migration museums started in 2004 when she won a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship to investigate representations of multiculturalism in Australia, Canada and the USA, which involved visits to many of the world’s most significant migration museums.

  • Ian Wilson Trustee

    Ian Wilson has recently been appointed Assistant Director of Operations (Dorset & Wiltshire) at the National Trust.

    Ian was previously Assistant Director of External Affairs, and was also responsible for the Trust’s operations and community work in London, during which time he oversaw the acquisition of the home of Kenyan born poet and artist Khadambi Asalache. He is also a former Trustee of the Heritage Alliance. Prior to running London for the National Trust he was English Heritage’s lead on urban regeneration policy.

    Ian’s migratory roots lie in a combination of the Jewish community of east London and the constant flow of peoples between Scotland and England. He is married and has two children who have English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Norse, German and French roots.

  • Dr Myriam Cherti Trustee

    Myriam is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Prior to joining IPPR, she was a project coordinator at the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum where she led a national oral history project on the Moroccan diaspora in the UK. As part of this project she curated a national and international touring exhibition on British-Moroccans and the history of migration since the nineteenth century. Myriam also worked as a consultant and researcher on a number of European projects looking at the integration of ethnic minorities. She has also taught at the University of Sussex.

    Myriam holds an MSc in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and a PhD in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex. Her doctoral research critically examines the pertinence of social capital as an analytical tool in explaining patterns of exclusion and inclusion among Moroccans in London.

  • Andrew Steeds Trustee

    Andrew Steeds is a writing and editorial consultant who runs two companies – Simply Put and the Writing Clinic – specialising in making public written communication clearer and more accountable. He started off working as a teacher, before going on to work in educational research and educational publishing. He was heavily involved in the publication of the then Department for Education and Skills’ adult core curriculum documents, including manuals on working with refugees and asylum seekers, and with EAL learners (learners with English as an additional language).

  • Emma Williams Contributor

    Emma Williams is chief executive of Student Action for Refugees (STAR), the national network of 5,000 students working to improve the lives of refugees in the UK. Emma has been working with refugees in the UK for 17 years. She previously ran a community centre for refugees from Vietnam and worked at Freedom from Torture where she established four new centres for survivors of torture

  • Caroline Evans Contributor

    Caroline is deputy director of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. She was previously CEO of the UK Teaching Awards and a founder director of the agency EdComs. She has worked in educational publishing and consultancy and has experience as a school governor in primary and secondary schools.

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