Thomas Devine is the Sir William Fraser Professor Emeritus of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, the oldest and most prestigious chair in the field. He previously held professorships of history at the universities of Aberdeen and Strathclyde, where he also served as deputy principal.

His research and teaching focus on the history of Scotland, the global Scottish diaspora since c.1500, Irish–Scottish historical comparisons, immigration to Scotland, and Highland and rural Lowland societies since c.1700. He has published 45 books, several of which became international bestsellers, together with around 100 research articles and book chapters.

His many honours include: a knighthood for services to the study of Scottish history; the Royal Medal, Scotland's highest academic honour across all disciplines; and, uniquely for a historian of Scotland, the Joint Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Archives of the UK Parliament.

In 2023, the International Review of Scottish Studies described Sir Thomas Devine as "the most illustrious Scottish historian of our era. His profile in scholarly circles is matched by his reputation as a public intellectual.

Chris Fleet worked at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the National Library of Wales before joining the National Library of Scotland in 1994. His main responsibilities at NLS relate to modern and historical digital mapping, and making historical maps available online. He has researched, written and spoken widely on these subjects and on maps of Scotland, and is a co-author of Scotland: Mapping the Nation (2011), Edinburgh: Mapping the City (2014), Scotland: Mapping the Islands (2016), and Scotland: Defending the Nation (2018).

Marjory Harper is Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research focuses on British (particularly Scottish) emigration since 1800. Two of her monographs have won international prizes, including the Saltire History Prize and the University of Guelph’s Frank Watson Prize. She has published around 100 articles and book chapters and edited a number of books, including Migration and Mental Health: Past and Present (2016). Her monograph, Testimonies of Transition (an oral history of twentieth-century Scottish emigration) was published in 2018, and a revised version was published as an audio book in 2020. Her most recent monograph, Northern Isles No More? The story of emigration from Orkney and Shetland since 1700, was published in 2026. She has devised and directed an online Master’s Programme in Scottish Heritage and in 2020 she was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Jinty Nelson Prize for Inspirational Teaching and Supervision. She contributes regularly to radio and television programmes such as Digging Up Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are?

Graeme Morton is Chair of Modern History at the University of Dundee. Previously he was the inaugural Scottish Studies Foundation Chair at the University of Guelph (2004-2013). He has written or edited a dozen books on Scottish nationalism, climate history and emigration, including Ourselves and Others: Scotland 1832-1914 (2013), William Wallace: A National Tale (2014), Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora (2021), and Scottish Loyalism in the British Atlantic World (2025). He recently received funding from the Scottish Government to produce Scottish Clubs and Societies in the Diaspora: A Practical Toolkit for Inclusion and Growth (Dundee, 2025). Here, through a series of interviews, he and Lindsay Petrie sought to identify pathways and resources that might help today’s Scottish clubs and societies to better function, grow, and prosper. Their results are freely available to all.

Open Access: https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/publications/scottish-clubs-and-societies-in-the-diaspora-a-practical-toolkit-/

Morag Peers has been interested in family history for decades; her own family roots are in Berwickshire and East Lothian on the paternal side, and Ayrshire and Dumfries on the maternal line. She graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 2023 with a Masters in Genealogical Studies and now works as a professional genealogist. In addition to researching families for clients, she teaches adults the basics of family history research, lectures on Scottish topics for cruise ship passengers, and speaks both in person and virtually to family history societies and conferences across the globe.