Timothy Insoll is a Professor of African and Islamic Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Educated at the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge, he was initially awarded a Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge before being appointed lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1998, where he was awarded a personal chair in 2005. He is the author or editor of 16 books, three special journal issues, and numerous articles and reviews on a wide range of research topics across the discipline of archaeology and has completed fieldwork in Mali, Ghana, western India, Bahrain, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda.