Wednesday 03 December was WHUK’s 2025 AGM. We said goodbye to three Trustees – Teresa Anderson, Graham Thompson and Tony Crouch. We thank them all for all their sterling work for WHUK and WH in the UK during their time with us. Teresa and Graham are both retiring; Tony will remain as a co-opted non-voting Board member and continue contributing to WHUK’s events development.
Three new Trustees were voted onto the Board. We welcome and look forward to working with:
Prof. Michael Burton
Michael is the Director and Chief Executive of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, the UK’s oldest continuously operating astronomical observatory, as well its longest running planetarium. His background is as a research astronomer and university educator. Previously he was Director of Teaching in Physics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He now leads the delivery of Armagh’s research, education and outreach programmes in astronomy and the public communication of science, as well being the custodian of the Observatory’s deep and living scientific heritage. Michael is leading the aspiration of the Astronomical Observatories of Ireland (a partnership between the observatories of Armagh in NI and Birr & Dunsink in Ireland) to seek UNESCO World Heritage inscription as a transnational nomination between Ireland and the UK. Earlier this year Birr and Dunsink were placed on the UNESCO Tentative List of Ireland by the Irish Government. He is President of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission for “World Heritage and Astronomy”, which oversaw the ICOMOS thematic study of heritage sites in astronomy and archeoastronomy which has led to several successful nominations with an astronomical connection over the past decade.
Graham Neville
Graham is Head of Operations North for NatureScot, and brings over twenty years of senior leadership experience in nature conservation, landscape-scale partnership working, and strategic project delivery across Scotland’s most iconic natural landscapes. He is currently chair and am a founding trustee of The Flow Country Partnership SCIO, where he led the successful bid that secured UNESCO World Heritage Site status for The Flow Country in 2024. This involved complex stakeholder engagement across multiple sectors, the production of a globally significant nomination dossier, and steering a diverse partnership to a landmark outcome for the UK’s natural heritage. This experience gives Graham deep, practical knowledge of the World Heritage system, its expectations, and the lived realities of managing a natural site before and after inscription. As NatureScot’s Head of Operations North, he leads a team of around 50 colleagues delivering national priorities across protected areas, land management and nature restoration. He also directs major programmes including nature finance initiatives, large-scale peatland restoration, and invasive species eradication, with a strong emphasis on governance, risk management, and partnership collaboration.
Tim Stanley
Tim is an undergraduate degree in language and literature from Oxford and an MBA from a leading US
program. He has lived and worked in the Caribbean/Latin America, the US, Russia, Hong Kong and
Switzerland, as partner and country head of specialised professional services consultancies so is used
to running budgets and teams, setting strategy, taking responsibility for delivery of results and acting as
the organisation’s public face. His professional areas of expertise have been in governance, risk and
compliance matters for corporates. Tim takes a great interest in heritage, completed Bocconi’s MOOC in Art and Heritage Management, and is currently an online student of the World Heritage Studies master’s degree programme at BTU-Cottbus. As such he is exposed to a wide range of relevant heritage topics and professionals, both academic and field practitioners.
Image: Clockwise from left – Graham, Michael and Tim.