Peter Mackay was appointed Scotland’s Makar in 2024.
He is a Senior Lecturer in Literature in the School of English at the University of St Andrews, and an expert in Scottish Gaelic literature.
Peter’s books include two monographs, This Strange Loneliness: Heaney’s Wordsworth (McGill-Queen’s 2021) and Sorley Maclean (RIISS 2010). An anthology he edited with Iain S MacPherson, An Leabhar Liath: 500 years of Gaelic Love and Transgressive Verse (Luath 2015) won the Donald Meek Prize for Gaelic literature and the Saltire Scottish Research Book of the Year; another anthology co-edited with Jo MacDonald, 100 Dàn as Fheàrr Leinn / 100 Favourite Gaelic Poems won the Duais Ruaraidh MhicThòmais in 2021.
His poetry collections Gu Leòr / Galore (Acair 2015) and Nàdur de / Some Kind of (Acair 2020) were shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year; Nàdur de was also longlisted for the Highland Book Prize.
An AHRC / BBC Next Generation Thinker, Peter is a frequent broadcaster on Radio 3 and BBC Radio nan Gàidheal.
Laura Parker writes about nature, culture and the countryside. A regular contributor to Country Life magazine, her work has appeared in the Dundee Courier, Scottish Field and other publications including Caught by the River and landscape writing journal The Clearing.
Laura’s debut book, Stone on Stone is due for publication in 2027.
Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim is Professor of History at Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. Her areas of research include the history of medicine, the history of Eurasian medical interactions and, more generally, how knowledge moves.
She is the author of ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Roads and co-editor of Dynamic Balances: Public Health in the Premodern World.
She is currently working on a new book, Lost Knowledge: How the Past Can Teach Us to Live and Die Better.
Nira Wickramasinghe is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Her research centres on issues of belonging and everyday life under colonialism in Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean.
Nira is the author of several books including, Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka, which was awarded the John F. Richards 2021 Prize in South Asian History by the American Historical Association; Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History; and Monsoon Asia: A Reader on South and Southeast Asia co-edited with David Henley.
A new book, Cinnamon: A History of Taste and Empire is due for publication in November 2026.
Meghan Flaherty is the author of an acclaimed memoir, Tango Lessons published in 2018.
Meghan has written for publications including VQR, O The Oprah Magazine, The Iowa Review, Psychology Today, Parents and online at the New York Times, The Paris Review and Slate. Her essay ‘Ode to Gray’ was included among the notable mentions in 2019’s Best American Essays.
Meghan teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
In 2022, she was awarded an Ignite Fellowship by the Scottish Book Trust.
Merlin Hanbury-Tenison’s debut book, Our Oaken Bones: Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests was published to wide acclaim in March 2025, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
Merlin established The Thousand Year Trust, a charity dedicated to tripling the amount of Atlantic temperate rainforest growing in the UK over the next 30 years.
Merlin has written for publications including The Spectator and Green Spirit and his work at Cabilla has featured in outlets including National Geographic, BBC Travel and the Guardian.
Hugh Warwick is the author of several books including, A Prickly Affair: The Charm of the Hedgehog; The Beauty in the Beast: Britain’s Favourite Creatures and the People who Love Them; Hedgehog; Linescapes: Remapping and Reconnecting Britain’s Fragmented Wildlife and, most recently, Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation.
Cull of the Wild was awarded the 2025 ZSL Clarivate Award for Communicating Zoology and was also longlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation.
Hugh is an ecologist and writer and has contributed essays and articles to publications including the Guardian, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Countryfile Magazine, New Humanist and the Ecologist. He is also the spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
Luke Thompson is the author of several works of non-fiction, poetry and fiction including, Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum: Conversations with Other Animals; Treasures of Cornwall: A Literary Anthology; A Guillemot Guide to Very Small Press Publishing; Rhinoceros; Singing About Melon; and Clay Phoenix: A Biography of Jack Clemo.
Luke is the founding editor of the award-winning Guillemot Press and also teaches on the Professional Writing MA at the University of Falmouth.
Rose Shapiro is the author of the acclaimed book Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All.
Rose lives in Bristol and has written for publications including the Independent, the Guardian, the Observer, Time Out, Good Housekeeping and the Health Service Journal.
Leo Mellor is the Roma Gill Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.
Leo’s books include Reading the Ruins: Modernism, Bombsites and British Culture and the forthcoming The Long 1930s: Spaces and Places of British Literature, 1926-1952.
He is currently editing the Selected Poems of Dylan Thomas, due for publication with Penguin in November 2026.
