Professor Robert Arnott
Professor Robert (Bob) Arnott was an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He studied at University College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Pittsburgh and the British School at Athens. He was before early retirement, Professor of the History and Archaeology of Medicine, Director of the Centre for the History of Medicine, Sub-Dean of the School of Medicine and Public Orator of the University of Birmingham.
An archaeologist, palaeoepidemiologist and medical historian, he has excavated in Greece, Italy and Turkey and is an authority on disease and medicine in the Aegean and Anatolian Bronze Age civilisations, 2000-1100 BCE. Some of his latest work has also involved extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA from human skeletal remains found on Crete, to determine the origins of its prehistoric population. It was published in a paper in Nature in August 2017.
In recent years, his interest has turned to India, where he has frequently travelled for his work in modern global health and supporting charity hospitals in the State of Punjab and some of his publications, numbering six single-authored or edited books and over eighty papers, are centred on prehistoric India, particularly on health, disease and medicine in the Indus Civilisation, 2600-1900 BCE. His latest book, Disease and Healing in the Indus Civilisation, will be published in 2023. He is the Convenor of the University’s Ancient Medicine Seminar and is a Fellow of both the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Historical Society.
From an earlier career in the NHS, he also has an active interest in UK healthcare policy and has taught on Green Templeton’s Management in Medicine Programme. He is also passionate about defending the NHS. He was for many years, a Trustee and Secretary of the Bowel Disease Research Foundation and was until retirement from the post in July 2022, Chairman of the Patient Liaison Committee of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland (ACPGBI) and a Member of its Council, but he still helps to lead patient and public involvement and brings that experience to Green Templeton as a Clinical Teaching Assistant. He is a member of the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) Board of NHS England’s National Cancer Collaborating Centre and was in 2019, one of the founders of Bowel Research UK. In 2021, he was awarded Honorary Membership of the ACPGBI and in 2022, the Geoff Oates Medal, its highest honour.
Contact: robert.arnott@gtc.ox.ac.uk