Advisory Board

The research team is lucky to benefit from the experience and expertise of a number of academics and heritage professionals to help steer the project.

Briony McDonagh is Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Hull. A human geographer and environmental historian by training, she has published widely on histories and cultures of living with water and flood, on women’s histories, and on the geographies of enclosure, protest and the commons. Her current research uses place-based, creative and participatory approaches (including learning histories) to help build water and climate action. Much of this work is undertaken in partnership with UK coastal and estuarine communities experiencing increased flood and coastal erosion risks. She is also Director of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures and UK national lead for the Coast-R Network on Resilient Coastal Communities and Seas.

Ewen Cameron

Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography, University of Edinburgh

Ewen Cameron is Professor of Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh, where he has worked since 1993. He has worked on the political history of the Highlands in the modern period and on the relationship between the British state and the Highlands and on comparisons with Ireland. He has published widely on these themes including Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, 1880 — 1925  (1996) and a biography of the Crofter MP, Charles Fraser Mackintosh.

Ciarán Reilly

Assistant Professor, Maynooth University

Dr Ciarán Reilly is a Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Maynooth University. He is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Irish social history with a special interest in the Great Irish Famine, Irish country houses, landed estates, the Irish revolution and the Irish diaspora. He is also Assistant Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates at the Department of History. He is the author of a number of books on the Great Irish Famine including The Irish Land Agent, 1830-1860 (Dublin, 2014); Strokestown and the Great Famine (Dublin, 2014), and John Plunket Joly and the Great Famine in King’s County (Dublin, 2012). He is also the co-editor of Dublin and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin, 2022).

Alison Diamond

Archivist, Inveraray Castle

Alison Diamond is the archivist for Argyll Estates Archives, the family and estate archive of the Campbell family, earls and dukes of Argyll, which is preserved at Inveraray Castle. Alison’s work as archivist includes the management, preservation and cataloguing of the collection, promotion of the archive and its content, recruiting developing volunteers and developing a Friends group to support this work. Before coming to Argyll, Alison worked for National Records of Scotland in various curatorial roles including Education Officer and registrar for the Scottish Register of Tartans. She has a BD Hons from Aberdeen, an MA in Archive Studies from University College London and is learning Gaelic in her spare time. Alison teaches Scots Palaeography to volunteers, for the SRA and tutors the Scottish Palaeography & Diplomatic module for the Centre for Archives and Information Studies, University of Dundee.