In this year’s session we have had seven meetings here at the Royal Asiatic Society, and two meetings, including our Early Career Lectures, in Zoom. My sincere thanks go to all of the speakers who gave talks: William Day, Georgia Galani, Graham Barker, Francesca Lam-March, Mehdy Shaddel, Chris Barker, Tom Hockenhull, Frédérique Duyrat, and particularly to our Medallist for 2025, Vesta Curtis. The staff here at the Royal Asiatic Society have been very helpful and supportive, as always.
In September 2025 we had our symposium on ‘Coinage in Roman Britain: New Perspectives and the Way Forward’ at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. We had an excellent programme of papers from Sam Moorhead, Anni Byard, Murray Andrews,
Tasha Fullbrook, Susan Walker, Stephanie Bonnici and Roger Bland. The whole day was a great success, and I am pleased to say that we shall be having another symposium at the Faculty of English in Cambridge on Saturday 5 September this year. The subject this time will be ‘Coinage in the Late Roman Empire and Early Medieval Europe: Continuity and Crisis’. Booking for this symposium is now open and I am confident that it will be as successful as our symposium last year.
In the next session, starting in October, we shall be moving our monthly meetings to the Warburg Institute in Woburn Square, which hosts the joint Library of the Royal and British Numismatic Societies. After a recent refurbishment the Warburg Institute will provide an excellent venue for our meetings in its new Reemtsma Auditorium, and holding our meetings there will enable members to use the library when they attend meetings.
Tonight I must thank our three outgoing members of Council, Johanne Porter Margeurite Spoerri-Butcher and Etsuko Zakoji. They have all made a great contribution to the activities of our Society and they deserve our thanks.
We welcome three new members of Council. Tasha Fulbrook has worked as a Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Cornwall and is currently a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading, researching the production and use of ‘Barbarous Radiates’ in the late third century, as well as being a Project Curator for Iron Age and Roman Coin Finds with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Finlay Larkin studied Archaeology at the University of Exeter, and has worked as a Finds Liaison Assistant with the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Sussex. He is now an Imaging Assistant in the Department of Money and Medals at the British Museum. His research interests include Roman coinage and the piercing and reuse of early medieval coins. Amber Powell is a student at Durham University with a particular interest in the use of foreign coins in late medieval and post-medieval Britain.
The work of the Society would not be possible without the great contribution of our Honorary Secretary, Andrew Brown, who now has many calls on his time as Curator of Roman Coins at the Heberden Coin Room in Oxford. The contributions of our Vice Presidents, Megan Gooch and Matt Ball, have also been considerable.
Matt Ball edits the Society’s monthly E-newsletter, keeping the Society’s members in touch with our activities. Matt also looks after the Society’s website and he has continued to have a major role in the organization of our meetings here at the Royal Asiatic Society.
Megan Gooch has overseen a comprehensive review of our administration and archives, resulting in the appointment of an Administrator and an Archives Assistant. David Rowe was appointed as our Administrator in July 2025, to administer membership and other records and to be the first point of contact for members’ enquiries. He has implemented a new membership system that has already proved to be immensely helpful in the operations of our Society. Members now have access to a membership area on our website: https://membermojo.co.uk/numismatics. Michael Laposata was appointed to organize our digital and paper archives, and this work is now being completed by Ashleigh James-McKenna.
I am pleased to say that 58 new Fellows and Student Members have been elected during the year. We now have 530 individual members and 127 institutional members, making an impressive total of 657.
I am very sad to have to report the death of one of our Medallists and five members during the year, including three Honorary Fellows:
– Carmen Arnold-Biucchi was our Medallist in 2022. She had been the Harvard Art Museum’s first Curator of Ancient Coins until her retirement in 2022.
– Dr John Donal Bateson was the Curator of Numismatics at the Hunterian Museum for over 40 years from 1978 to 2019, and he became an Honorary Fellow of our Society in 2012.
– Philip Skingley was elected as an Honorary Fellow in 2014. He was a great support to the Society in hosting meetings at Spink, where his Book Department published many of our publications.
– Keith Sugden, elected as an Honorary Fellow in 2013, was a curator of the numismatic collection at the Manchester City Museum, where he created a Money Gallery. He was a Secretary and Treasurer of the UK Numismatic Trust, and a President of the British Association of Numismatic Societies (BANS).
– John Rainey, who joined the Society in 2021, was a founder of the Northern Branch of the Numismatic Society of Ireland, and the President of BANS at the time of his death. He made a great contribution to the promotion of numismatics by its societies.
– Paul Withers was elected as a Fellow in 1975, and he was a joint winner of the Lhotka Memorial Prize in 2006 and 2011. For many years he had a leading role in numismatic publishing at Galata Print.
Our Honorary Vice President Joe Cribb has continued to oversee distribution of the Society’s research grants through Council’s Grants sub-committee. The Grants sub-committee has recommended grants from its research funds twice, following deadlines in August 2025 and February 2026. Council approved a total of £27,750 to be awarded to thirteen applicants from the UK, France, Egypt, Israel, Italy, China and India, for a wide range of research projects. Two of the applicants received funds from the Malcolm Lyne bequest, which has been agreed could be used to give grants to young applicants. Grants were also made from the Casey, Lowick, Kreitman and Price Funds. The final grant from the Katherina and William Barrett Fund was also made.
The Society has awarded two prizes this year. The Samir Shamma Prize for a publication on Islamic numismatics has been awarded to Nicholas Schindel for Sylloge Nummorum Arabicorum Österreich, Band 1, Frühislamische Kupfermünzen nach der Reform von 77 AH (696/697 n. Chr.) (Vienna, 2025). The Lhotka Prize for an introductory book on numismatics was awarded jointly to Andrew Burnett for The Roman Provinces, 300BCE – 300CE: Using Coins as Sources (Cambridge, 2024), and to Dominic Chorney for Treasures of the Occult (London, 2025).
In 2025 the Society’s funds have, once again, seen a considerable increase in their overall health. A further legacy of just over £240,000 was received from the estate of Dr Malcolm Lyne which, together with our other income, brought our total funds of the Society at 31 December 2025 to a figure of over £1,100,000. Our investments have continued to remain stable despite the challenges and fluctuations presented to the various international markets by World events, and our investment managers have maintained a positive market value of our portfolio.
Our investments continue to be managed by Evelyn Partners, and we are always most grateful to Tristan Hillgarth and to Stefano Mazzola, who also acts as our independent examiner of the accounts, for their time and their generous advice and assistance in financial matters.
Under the stewardship of Brad Shepherd, the Honorary Librarian of the Royal and British Numismatic Societies, further progress has been made in the development of the two societies’ Numismatic Library at the Warburg Institute. The Library is now established in its permanent home in the open stacks of the Warburg’s basement and is accessible to members six days a week, together with full access to the Warburg Institute’s wider library collections.
Thanks to generous donations and an active acquisitions programme, the Library’s holdings have continued to expand significantly during the year, with more than 500 new books, periodicals, and auction catalogues added to the collection. Donations of items to fill gaps are always welcome.
The Library is one of the UK’s most important and accessible resources for numismatic research. Members are warmly encouraged to visit, explore the extensive collections, undertake research, and make use of the excellent facilities now available.
The Society’s publications, and in particular the Numismatic Chronicle, are the most important benefit of membership for many of our members, especially those from overseas. Our publications are in the safe hands of our Senior Editor, Clare Rowan, Simon Glenn as Reviews Editor, Murray Andrews as Production Editor and adviser on papers on medieval and modern numismatics, and Shailendra Bhandare as adviser on Asian numismatics. They have produced another superb volume of the Chronicle, maintaining its reputation as one of the most important periodicals in our subject.
Several new Special Publications are at an advanced stage of preparation. We are now working on Laurent Bricault and Cristian Mondello’s Isis Moneta, The ‘Vota Publica’ tokens from late antique Rome and Metallurgy in Numismatics 7, edited by Matthew Ponting, as well as a volume on the coinage of Ptolemaic Lycia by Ömar Tatar. Other Special Publications are also planned. In January 2026 Script Publisher Services became the distributor of the Society’s publications. They now distribute all of our Special Publications and recent volumes of the Numismatic Chronicle.
I am very glad to announce that the worthy winner of the Society’s Medal for 2026 is Dr Barrie Cook. Barrie was a curator of Later Medieval and Early Modern Collections at the British Museum for forty years, from 1985 to 2025. During that time he curated many notable exhibitions at the museum. His tireless work on the increasing numbers of coin hoards going through the Treasure Act system has resulted in numerous excellent publications, culminating in the two-volume publication of hoard reports in English Medieval Coin Hoards, now in progress. Barrie’s contribution to the subject has been immense, and he found time to be a member of our Council and Honorary Secretary from 1992 to 2001.
It has been a great pleasure and an honour to be serving as President of our Society at this very positive time in its history. We have made great progress in so many ways, and we can look forward to the new session with confidence.
Martin Allen, RNS President.
