Founded in 1947 as The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, BIAA has offices in Ankara and London. All scholars from the UK planing archaeological research in Turkey must go through the Institute. John Garstang was its first director, followed by Seton Lloyd and Michael Gough. James Mellart was assistant director from 1957 to 1961, and in 1968 David French, who had worked at Çatalhöyük with Mellart, become its fourth director, retiring in 1995. David Barchard wrote a full appraisal of French for Cornucopia after his death in March 2017. The current director of the Institute is Dr Lutgarde Vandeput.

See Professor Stephen Mitchell’s lecture ‘Work of the British Institute at Ankara’, given to the Anglo-Turkish Society in 2012.