About Me

I have been interested in history since childhood and when I began researching my father’s family tree in 2006, for his 70th birthday present, my love of genealogy was born. As part of this first genealogy project I visited the houses and streets in which some of our ancestors had lived and died in London’s East End. I began to think about how I could try to understand their lives, families, homes and the times they lived in.

I continued to practice and study genealogy as a hobby, alongside a career in Marketing, having children and moving countries several times. On returning to the UK in 2016, I was finally able to start studying with the University of Strathclyde and became a Qualified Genealogist in 2019 having completed my Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogy, Palaeography and Heraldry.

I am based in Westcliff on Sea in Essex. Whilst a good amount of my research is carried out online, many records are not digitised and projects often require visits to archive repositories, my nearest being Essex, London and the South East. If your family history requires archive visits in other areas of the UK, I am part of a network of genealogists who can help.

I have a particular interest in Victorian, Edwardian and interwar housing in my local area of Chalkwell, Westcliff on Sea, Leigh on Sea and Southend on Sea having conducted extensive research here since moving back to the area.

I was also brought up in a Jewish family in the Southend area, so have a particular interest in Jewish family history and migration.

The philosophy I first discovered when researching my father’s family tree informs my approach to combining genealogy with family history today to truly bring the past to life in a beautifully modern way.