Hockenhull, Thomas

Curator of Medals and Modern Money at the British Museum, London

Tom Hockenhull (* 1984) obtained his BA in History in 2005, followed by an MA in Classical Civilizations with a focus on Classical Greece in 2006, both at the University of Leeds. In his dissertation, he dealt with Philip II of Macedonia’s policy towards Thrace.

Following a brief stint as visitor services assistant at the Household Cavalry Museum, Horse Guards, Tom joined the British Museum as a visitor host in 2007. In 2008 he joined the Department of Coins and Medals as a Museum Assistant.

In 2011 he was appointed Curator of Modern Money and in 2020 his remit was extended to include the medals collection.

Tom is also co-ordinator of the Department’s volunteer program and Program Manager of the Room 69a temporary exhibitions space. In this capacity, he curated the exhibitions “Bubbles and Bankruptcy: Financial Crises in Britain since 1700” (2012), “The Other Side of the Medal: How Germany saw the First World War” (2014) and “Currency of Communism” (2017). In 2018 he co-curated a major exhibition, “I Object: Ian Hislop’s search for dissent” in Room 35 at the British Museum.

Adding to his professional work, Tom is council member for the British Numismatic Society and gives media interviews on current affairs programs (including BBC and Sky in the UK). He regularly contributes items to the British Museum Magazine. Other select publications include “The British Museum and the Blitz: the Department of Coins and Medals in Wartime” (British Numismatic Journal, 2012), “Stamped all over the King’s Head: Defaced Coins and Women’s Suffrage” (British Numismatic Journal, 2016) and “Rising above the Propaganda: German Medallic Art in Britain (1914–1919)” (The Art of Devastation: Medals and Posters of the Great War, 2017) . He is editor of the book “Symbols of Power: Ten Coins that Changed the World” (2015) and co-author of “I Object: Ian Hislop’s search for dissent” (2018).

In 2016 Tom was the recipient of an Art Fund “New Collecting Award” to study and collect objects from former communist regimes.

You can reach Tom by email.

On the British Museum website, you can find his department here.

To view Thomas Hockenhull’s profile on academia.edu, please click here.

Here you can download his paper “The British Museum and the Blitz – the Department of Coins and Medals in Wartime”.

Here you can see Tom discussing the British Museum’s ‘Votes for Women’ penny.

And here you can see him discuss the Czechoslovak 1 crown coin of 1957.

*as of 2 March 2020