Research

David has published widely on the history of archaeology and cultural property. His Sifting the Soil of Greece (2011) was published to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the British School at Athens. His biography of Winifred Lamb: Aegean Prehistorian and Museum Curator (2018) presented the work of the honorary keeper of the Greek Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His The World of Disney: From Antiquarianism to Archaeology (2020) explores the life and family of Dr John Disney, benefactor of the Fitzwilliam Museum. David was a contributor to Paul G. Bahn (ed.), The History of Archaeology (2014) that won the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award (2015). He was a supervising editor for the Dictionary of British Classicists (2004), and has contributed several memoirs to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

His research on cultural property has been published in a number of journals including the American Journal of Archaeology, the Journal of Field Archaeology, and the International Journal of Cultural Property. He is a contributing editor of the Journal of Art Crime with a regular column ‘Context Matters’. Essays from the column appeared as Context Matters: Collating the Past (2020) and as Artwashing the Past: Context Matters (2024).

David is currently working on a collaborative interdisciplinary project on the temple of Athena Nike at Athens.

David has prepared a series of analyses on heritage data, State of the Historic Environment 2021, based on the RSA Heritage Index (2020). The first report on heritage in a regional setting appeared as Historic Kent (2022), and this was followed by From the Wash to the White Cliffs: The Contribution of the Heritage Sector to Society and the Economy (2022).

He is a member of the Society of Authors.

Details of lectures and publications can be found on academia.edu and ResearchGate.

A range of research topics can be found here.