Maev Kennedy is a staff news writer for The Guardian and writes regularly for the Museums Journal. At the Guardian she has edited the diary column and also been the arts and heritage correspondent, and also writes on archaeology.
She was born in Dublin and attended University College Dublin (UCD) before joining The Irish Times, where she became the parliamentary sketch writer. Her mother is the novelist Val Mulkerns, herself the daughter of the Irish revolutionary and strolling player Jimmy Mulkerns, who was interned in Wales after the Easter Uprising and was known as "The Rajah of Frongoch". Her late father Maurice Kennedy was also an author: his much anthologised short story, "Vladivostok", was first published in the Winter's Tales collection of 1956, and included in the posthumously published collection of his writings, The Way to Vladivostok.
Maev Kennedy is the author of the Hamlyn History of Archaeology. She also broadcasts regularly for the BBC, in particular often presenting the "Open Book" programme on BBC Radio 4. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.