Michael Ansell
Michael Ansell, now retired has a long standing condition, fixation some might call it, with the Gaelic origin place-names of the Greater Galloway area of South-West Scotland. He has written several articles on the subject, co-organised the successful conferences, Galloway: The Lost Province of Gaelic Scotland (New Galloway 2018) and The Gaelic Heritage of Carrick (Maybole 2024) and co-edited the book of the proceedings of the New Galloway Conference of the same name.
James Brown
James Brown MSc, FSA Scot, is an independent historical researcher focussed on the historical architecture as well as the social and cultural history of south-west Scotland and its application to heritage tourism. Prior to that he had ‘front-of-house’ tourism experience at Historic Scotland as monument steward at Crossraguel Abbey and with the Friends of Dundonald Castle as manager of the castle visitor centre. James is part-owner of Baltersan, a 16th c. tower-house near Maybole.
Colin Mackenzie
Colin Mackenzie studied English Language at the University of Glasgow where he wrote a PhD on Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English semantics. While an undergraduate at Glasgow he took a course in onomastics and hasn’t stopped thinking about place-names since. He runs the dgplacenames social media accounts, website and repo where he posts research on the place-names, languages and literature of (greater) Galloway and Dumfriesshire.