 The original vision of the Institute of Archaeology, as conceived by Mortimer Wheeler in 1932, was very much as a centre of specialist field training aimed at British archaeology. Of course, an early steer via donations and collections from Flinders-Pietre, as well as the wishes of initial students, moved the Institute into West Asia and then into the wider world. However, a strong impulse towards British archaeology remained, and in 1974 the Institute became wedded for the first time to a field unit, set up to deliver training and rescue archaeology in Sussex. Its first director was the late Peter Druitt. It started life as the Sussex Archaeological Field Unit and went on to absorb the Essex County Council Field Archaeology Unit. Over time, its name changed. Today, the Institute's contract on is known as Archaeology Southeast, its director, Dominic Perry. And though it remains situated in Sussex, it is also present in Essex, and of course the Institute is in the heart of Bloomsbury. During the 1990s, I was a young member of staff in Bloomsbury when Peter Akko ascended to the directorship and profoundly changed the priorities of our Institute. This was the moment for global, public and indigenous archaeology focusing upon heritage issues, and since that time the Institute's position in the archaeology of Britain has, with some bright exceptions, gradually faded from the foreground. Now, ironically, as the Institute's new director and Africanist and president of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, I'm seeking to revive and increase our field activities in England and to enhance our relationship with Archaeology Southeast. In this brief presentation, I will focus on elements of our institutional relationship as they relate to the goals of the Society of Antiquaries New Manifesto on the Future of Archaeology in England. The nature of symbiosis between the Institute and Archaeology Southeast has been the focus of two summer symposia. In these, for example, it was resolved that we would inaugurate a common research network and seminar series on UK archaeology, that we would remove barriers to Archaeology Southeast's involvement in Institute teaching, and that we would collaborate to develop sector-leading field training. Yet a challenge remains in that we cover a very wide English research landscape. Indeed, geographically, I believe that our institutional range epitomizes some of the problems potentially posed by geographic hubs. We straddle and are concerned with archaeological projects intensively in three regions, but we're also active elsewhere in England. We would thus be looking to sustain multiple partnerships with hubs in an already stretched working environment. One must keep firmly in mind that academic institutional research is rarely focused on any one region of our country. Regardless, our work must necessarily build from our relationship with our students and the creation and sustaining of relevant expertise. No audience is more important. If we do not teach students the very best of fieldwork practice based on an artful combination of reliable method and its reflexive application, then we will fail them. But our students suffer a want of useful fieldwork training opportunities. The best learning environments set students alongside skilled practitioners. We know that not all commercial projects are suitable for such collaborative work, but we intend to invest more in overcoming the barriers involving students and volunteers in both research-led and development-led projects, as well as giving professionals from the commercial sector more opportunities to teach on training projects in the lecture theatre and in the laboratory. In particular, the Institute of Archeology is seeking to create multiple long-term training excavations in the UK, drawing on the expertise of our 70-plus Bloomsbury research staff and the staff of Archeology Southeast. This means active work to improve field excavation methodology and synergy between contractors and academics. This training will involve UCL students at all levels and active field and laboratory research in England. Practice-led teaching has a vital contribution to make in producing useful archaeologists, whether training and survey and excavation, targeting commercial needs for specialist training in pottery or animal bones and so forth, or running successful hybrid degrees, such as our new BA in Archeology with a one-year field placement at Archeology Southeast. We contend that all such training is best undertaken in coordination between academic and commercial spheres. Of course, any attempt to tear down barriers between academia and practice is also an attack on the silos that deter other forms of engagement. We are conscious that doing Archeology goes far beyond excavation and embraces objects, buildings, landscapes, communities, sustainability, museums, and heritage at large. These are areas where the Institute is actively engaged, particularly in our investment in the development of UCL East, our new campus at Stratford. But these interdisciplinary relationships can always be better articulated and better expressed. We aim to commit Institute heritage resources to work in common with communities and to create methodologies that more effectively assess the impacts of our archaeological projects on these communities. Then there's the question of networks, data sharing, and synthesis. Ultimately our challenge is to build broadly based data networks, using information from development led projects to do better and more exciting archaeological synthesis. This involves commitment of staff on both sides of our partnership to develop flexible and useful databases, especially where pioneering work has already been carried forward by Archeology Southeast. This means keeping up the pressure on using the results of our work to fuel new study and tell new stories, including the more effective sharing of archaeological data between organizations. To conclude, as one of the UK's oldest institutions for training in field archaeology, the Institute of Archeology stands ready to make fresh contributions to improving archaeological practice. We are keen to collaborate with local authorities and the commercial sphere to produce useful field research and innovative data analysis while remaining fully awake to the role of public archaeology. In the coming years we are aiming to advance our involvement in UK archaeology in teaching new generations of field and lab archaeologists to a high standard, suitable to fill growing gaps in the world of commercial archaeology.