I studied at Cambridge and Cardiff before moving to the University of Leicester to start my PhD on Iron Age and early Roman metalwork. As part of my doctoral research, I also spent five months as a Research Fellow at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, where I studied the role of trade and exchange in colonial North America.
After completing my PhD, I worked for a year at the British Museum as curator of the European Iron Age collections. In 2013 I returned to Leicester to begin a three year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship entitled 'Gold and silver in Iron Age and Roman Britain: Transformations in metallurgy and value.'