Pauline Harding is a PhD researcher and journalist based in Cardiff, Wales. In her research at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, she is exploring what “cultural heritage” means, exactly, in Uganda, where archaeological materials are valued less for what they can teach us about history than as places that connect the living with spirits of the dead. For her work on this AHRC-funded project she was shortlisted as a BBC New Generation Thinkers finalist in 2024 and selected for the Edinburgh Television Festival’s TV PhD talent scheme in 2020. She has also spoken about her research on BBC Radio’s Free Thinking. Related publications and conference appearances are listed here.

Until September 2023 Pauline was contributing editor of The Strad, where over the past decade she has published numerous photographs, investigative features and interview pieces with superstar string players including Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Hilary Hahn, Janine Jansen, Itzhak Perlman and Nigel Kennedy. Her journalism career began when she set up her own music careers publication, Leading Note, with which she won the White Rose Centre for Enterprise Business Planning Award 2006. She won runner-up as BBC magazines newcomer of the year for her work as editorial assistant of BBC Music Magazine in 2007, before taking a break to train as an archaeologist and work as a ghostwriter. She joined The Strad’s editorial team in 2012.

Pauline also enjoys playing her violin, horse riding, drawing, running and Krav Maga, when there’s time alongside mummying her lively two-year-old. She plays chamber music semi-professionally and sells her artworks through GiddyArtBoutique, on Etsy.