Keshlan Padayachee
(he/him)

Teams and roles for Keshlan Padayachee

Research student
School of History, Archaeology and Religion

I am a doctoral researcher jointly based at Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, funded by the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP4) under the Welsh Culture and Heritage Consortium. My research, Addressing the Roman Colonial Story in South-East Wales, re-examines the archaeology of Roman Wales to explore how imperial power and provincial identities were negotiated on a local scale through material and cultural expression. Drawing on under-studied museum collections, excavation archives, and community-reported finds, my work integrates archaeological analysis with collaborative and theoretically informed methodologies to develop new perspectives on the colonial encounter in Roman Britain. Through this approach, the project reconsiders the entangled legacy of empire and situates Roman Wales within wider debates on imperialism, mobility, and cultural memory. More broadly, I am interested in how material culture reveals processes of interaction, transformation, and remembrance across imperial contexts, and how these perspectives can inform more inclusive and reflexive approaches to the ancient past.

Thesis

Addressing the Roman Colonial Story in South-East Wales

This project undertakes a reappraisal of the colonial encounter between Rome and the communities of South-East Wales through an integrated analysis of understudied museum collections, excavation archives, and community-reported finds. It interrogates the dynamics of power, identity formation, and material practice across the region’s first four centuries of Roman occupation, employing theoretically informed and collaborative methodologies to reassess the nature, variability, and consequences of imperial entanglement. Developed in partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru and Cardiff University initiatives including CAER Heritage and Community Gateway, the research advances ethically grounded, participatory approaches to archaeological interpretation that move beyond traditional academic epistemologies. By foregrounding the multiplicity of local experiences and their negotiation within broader imperial structures, it positions Roman Wales within wider debates on coloniality, frontier interaction, and the material mediation of cultural memory—and its afterlives.

Funding sources

This research is fully funded by the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP4) between Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, under the Welsh Culture and Heritage Consortium.

Keshlan Padayachee is a doctoral researcher at Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, funded by the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP4) under the Welsh Culture and Heritage Consortium. His project, Addressing the Roman Colonial Story in South-East Wales, reassesses the region’s archaeological record to examine the nature of imperial interaction and local responses through critical and community-engaged research.

He holds an MSt in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar, and a BA in Archaeology and Ancient History from Cardiff University, where he graduated top of his cohort with first-class honours. His research centres on the material culture of empire, particularly in Roman Britain, with interests in provincial identity, cultural exchange, and the interpretation of colonial encounters.

He has undertaken field and post-excavation research in a range of Roman and transitional provincial contexts, contributing to curatorial, interpretive, and public engagement initiatives within both academic and heritage settings. His work combines close engagement with material evidence and critical reflection on how archaeological interpretation intersects with questions of power, representation, and cultural memory. In a wider intellectual context, his research advances understanding of the ancient world by resituating Roman Britain through theoretically informed frameworks that address cross-cultural interaction, processes of transformation, and the shaping of historical consciousness.