The Team
Dr Bea Lewkowicz
Executive Director
Dr Bea Lewkowicz is the Director of Sephardi Voices UK. She is a social anthropologist and oral historian, as well as the Director the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive of the Association of Jewish Refugees. Her research interests include oral history; trauma and memory; diasporas and displacement; and nationalism and ethnicity. She has worked on many oral history projects and has directed and produced a wide range of testimony-based films. Amongst her publications are The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, Identity (Vallentine Mitchell: 2006) and Émigré Voices: Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria (Brill: 2021).
Frank Battersby
Cameraman
Frank has been working as a freelance Cameraman and Director/Cameraman for 25 years. He has worked across all disciplines but the majority of his work has been in factual, educational and corporate film making. He lives in North London with his partner and two sons.
Susanna Kleeman
Website Development
Susanna studied history and has worked in digital technology since 1996. Projects include: interactive TV games for Cable & Wireless and Virgin Media, strategy and product development for NTL and the BBC. She wrote the initial business case for the BBC's iPlayer service and helped develop the BBC's digital archive strategy. She now combines content strategy and branding with hands-on site building and design for a variety of clients. @BookJaw
Simon Waxman
Digitisation
Simon has been a videographer and editor for many years, working on a wide variety of projects, including documentaries.
Sharon Rapaport
Former Interviewer and Director
Sharon is an Israeli oral historian and documentary filmmaker, specialising in documenting life stories and community histories. She was involved with Sephardi Voices UK from its inception to 2016, when she returned to Israel. She now works for Yad Vashem, documenting life history testimonies from Holocaust survivors.
TRUSTEES
Alec Nacamuli
Chairman
Alec Nacamuli was born in Alexandria and left after the Suez Crisis in 1956. He was an executive with a major IT services company. He is a council member of the Association of Jews from Egypt and Nebi Daniel International Association, which strives to protect the Jewish heritage in Egypt. He writes articles and gives lectures on the Jews from Arab countries, and is a volunteer guide on Ancient Egypt at the British Museum.
Elie Chilton
Trustee
Elie was born in Alexandria and left Egypt in 1958 following the Suez Crisis. He is an entrepreneur who has started a number of industrial businesses in Scotland and latterly created a consultancy business focusing on financial and business strategies for small to medium size companies. He is a non-executive finance director with a biotechnology company and on the board of the Jewish Literary Trust, publishers of the Jewish Quarterly magazine.
Sandra Dangoor
Trustee
Following a long career as a stockbroker in the City of London, Sandra has now turned her attention to charitable projects, across a broad spectrum of interests, from Sephardi and Jewish activities, to financial and mental health, as well as many more! She enjoys playing bridge, the arts, sports and traveling.
Elizabeth Marcus
Trustee
Dr Elizabeth Marcus is a Lecturer in French and Francophone studies at Newcastle University. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2017. Before joining Newcastle as a Lecturer, she worked at the University of Leeds, at Stanford University and at MIT. Her work bridges French history, Middle Eastern studies, global history, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies. She is completing her first book, which examines the afterlife of the French empire in Lebanon, a country marked in its language and administration by its experience during Ottoman and French rule.
Elly Livingstone
Trustee
Elly was born in Glasgow and grew up in Manchester. His mother's family originate from Baghdad, where they lived for many generations until the departure of the Jewish community from Iraq during the 1950s and 1960s. Following completion of academic studies at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, Elly pursued a career in the fields of Management Consulting, Corporate Finance Advisory, and Global Private Equity Investing. He is based in London, where he lives with his family.
Vered Aaron
Trustee
Vered was born in Jerusalem and has a BA from the Hebrew University. She moved to London in 1985. In 1987 she founded Young Hadassah, UK. She is involved in many charities: CBF, UJIA, KKL, CECI UK, Sheba Medical Centre, and chairs Friends of Israel Cancer Association in the UK. She is married with three children.
Edwin Shuker
Trustee
Edwin Shuker is a London based international businessman with a wide range of educational, communal and charitable involvements. He is currently Vice President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.