Oliver leads Oxford Humanities Division’s engagements with the UK and international heritage community. He co-ordinates, supports and brokers projects between the University of Oxford and external partners through enabling individual researchers, research groups, students and professional services to develop mutually-beneficial collaborations. Oliver is co-lead of the Oxford University Heritage Network (www.heritagenetwork.ox.ac.uk).
Oliver is a historian by training, and received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. He teaches architectural and cultural history with a focus on the long eighteenth century.
Oliver has published widely on Gothic Revival architecture, landscape gardening, patriotism, and the country house. His most recent peer-reviewed journal article explores the politics of horse racing in the early 1760s Britain.
Oliver has worked as a Consultant for a range of different organisations, from the Mount Stuart Trust in Scotland, numerous television production companies, tourism providers and the investment management firm, Quilter Cheviot. Oliver is an Associate of Thompson Harrison and is part of the teaching faculty at the Said Business School for Oxford Cultural Leaders and the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme.
He is a Council Member of the Oxfordshire Record Society; Heritage Officer for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS); Governor of Compton Verney House Trust; and sits on the Education and Publications Committee of The Gardens Trust and Arts Council England’s Designation Panel. Oliver is chair of The Heritage Alliance’s Digital, Learning & Skills Advocacy Group.