Marcus is founding director of jTrails, the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail, and a professional Heritage consultant, working nationally and in Europe, with religious and minority cultural heritage and religious buildings. He is a qualified teacher, who has also worked as a professional tour-guide and ran his own heritage tour business in Oxford for nearly ten years.
Involved in the study of Anglo-Jewish heritage, history and archaeology, for the past three decades, Marcus has conducted intensive original research into more than 40 Jewish communities across the UK, disseminating the results to both academic and popular audiences. He has also worked on many ‘grass-roots’ community based, Jewish heritage projects, academic partnership projects and created Exhibitions. He also made a documentary film. 'Les Chemin des Juifs' on the Holocaust in NW France and set up the Lincoln section for the Simon Scharma documentary series, 'The Story of the Jews'. As part of his work with the USHMM he has also conducted original research into the Holocaust in the Channel Islands and France, creating Holocaust Trails in those locations. A trustee and member of Council for the Jewish Historical Society of England, he has written over 35 Jewish heritage trails and personally led many tours, starting with the Oxford trail in 1989, and has been a key agent in the preservation of historic Synagogues in Newport and Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales.
Over the years, Marcus has made a number of significant contributions to Anglo-Jewish research. As well as rediscovering the site and remains of Northampton's medieval Jewish cemetery and synagogue and Jewish Quarter, he helped re-identify England's only example of a medieval Jewish tombstone as well as other archeological remains. He has also conducted over a decade of research into the Holocaust on Alderney in the Channel Islands and campaigned for the preservation of Holocaust Jewish graves from a major infrastructure project. He has spoken about Anglo-Jewry and the Holocaust at the JHSE, the National Limmud Conference and Festival, the Wiener Library, and many other venues, and has appeared on national and international television promoting Jewish heritage. He has published on the 'Home for Aged Jews' at Nightingale House and 'The Jewish Heritage of Lincoln Cathedral', and on Jewish slave labour camps in NW France (as an official contributor to the USHMM ‘Camps and Ghettos Encyclopaedia’), as well as in the Journal of Medieval Archeology and the Historic Environment Journal.
Marcus is co-curator of the Country Houses, Jewish Homes exhibition and leads our work on volunteer training with the National Trust and other UK heritage organisations. Together with project researcher Silvia Davoli, he is co-creator of the International Dr. G. W. Leitner trail. International dr g w leitner trail - Trails - Anglo-Jewish History - JTrails.org.uk. He is also a member of the steering committee.