Dr Tiffany Jenkins is a writer and cultural historian. She is the author of the acclaimed Keeping Their Marbles: How Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums and Why They Should Stay There, described in the Sunday Times as, ‘An outstanding achievement, clear-headed, wide-ranging and incisive.’ Her latest book, Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, is published by Picador in May 2025. She is also the author of Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority, and editor of Political Culture: Soft Interventions and Nation Building
She is a trustee of the British Museum. She has held positions as an honorary fellow in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and visiting fellow in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics. Her BA is in art history, her PhD in sociology.
Jenkins wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of Secrecy’ and ‘Contracts of Silence’, about the rise of non-disclosure agreements, and has appeared regularly as a critic on Radio’4 Saturday Review and Front Row. She hosts the Behind the Scenes at the Museum podcast. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, the Financial Times, The Spectator, and the Scotsman – where she was a weekly opinion columnist.