The Heritage Professionals

Since inception of the renamed Antony Wallace archive in 2005, the Association has relied upon a number of museum professionals to manage the collection day-to-day, ensuring that it meets industry standards.

They catalogue, conserve and manage access to the collection. They also curate special exhibitions using our historical resource, as well as, now, maintaining this digital museum.

Co-location of the BAPRAS collection within the Royal College of Surgeons enabled early close cooperation between the RCS Hunterian Museum, Library and the BAPRAS Archive. The first such was Zoe Brealey, shared with the College and responsible for photographing, digitizing, cataloguing and marking both our collection of plastic surgical instruments and the 2,700 medically illustrative drawings of Diana (“Dickie”) Orpen. These were then made available on the College’s online “Surgicat” database.

Zoe was succeeded by Kristin Hussey catalogued the 16mm films in our possession showing early reconstructive procedures and burns surgery at Roehampton Hospital. These were subsequently digitized by the BBC, although not without some consternation at their graphic nature. Kristin also digitized the 400 pioneering early colour photographic prints of Percy Hennell, which documented the harrowing reconstruction of RAF personnel injured during the Second World War. She went on to curate with Brian Morgan, the very successful exhibition A Strange New Art – Plastic Surgery and the First World War, describing the modern of the specialty.

Ruth Neave took up the post in 2014, continuing the large task of cataloguing all our records and making the information available on Surgicat, then moving it in 2020 to our bespoke Axiell.

This has resulted in many recent requests to visit the Archives, particularly by undergraduates for their dissertations, and also for PhD theses and by historians. We have also been included in a number of television broadcasts.

She was the first employed solely by BAPRAS, and also supervised moving the collection into the Nuffield College of Surgery building during renovation of the Main Royal College of Surgeons site. Ruth also oversaw moving the Collection’s online database from Surgicat to

2021 saw Libby Gavin appointed as the Assistant Curator of the re-named BAPRAS Collection. Having had extensive experience at both the British, and Science Museums. She supervised bringing the Collection back into the new museum, has upgraded the catalogue and accessioned many newly donated items and documents. Libby also curated three exhibitions in the new Royal College Building. 

Rosannagh Maddock was appointed to the post of Collection Coordinator in Mid 2024. Rosannagh has embarked upon a an update to our physical and electronic catalogue systems. and will help drive forward the Virtual Museum.