Rachel Pope <small>FSA</small> is an archaeologist specialising in Iron Age Europe. She is Reader in European Prehistory at the University of Liverpool.
Pope undertook undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Durham University. Her PhD thesis was entitled "Prehistoric Dwelling: circular structures in north and central Britain c 2500 BC - AD 500", was awarded in 2003, and funded partly through support provided by the British Federation of Women Graduates and St Mary's College.
In 2004 Pope held an early career fellowship at the University of Leicester. Pope's research includes Iron Age hillforts, the Celts, and gender.
Pope has directed excavations at the Kidlandlee Dean Bronze Age Landscapes Project (Northumberland) and Eddisbury Hillfort, MerrickâÂÂs Hill (Cheshire), and at Penycloddiau Hillfort. She co-edited the volume The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the near Continent with Colin Haselgrove, which provided a thorough "overview of research into the early first millennium BC". She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2008. Pope is director of British Women Archaeologists. She is a key member of campaign to stop development at Old Oswestry Hillfort. Pope was featured in the Leonora Saunders and TrowelBlazers Raising Horizons exhibition as Margaret Guido.
Pope was one of the authors, all of whom "have experienced prolonged covid-19 symptoms, and have participated in various kinds of Long Covid advocacy", of an October 2020 opinion piece in The BMJ on the importance of using the "patient made" term Long Covid.