Dr. Robyn Atcheson in front of the Lanyon Building at Queen's University Belfast, wearing glasses, a pink cardigan, and a black and white patterned dress.

Robyn has over a decade of experience in teaching, lecturing and public speaking. Robyn teaches and writes on social history, the social history of medicine and women’s history in Britain and Ireland from the early modern period to the nineteenth century.

She completed her PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast in 2017. Her specialist research interests lie in the history of poor relief and public health in nineteenth-century Belfast. In 2015 she won the Kirkpatrick History of Medicine Research Award from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

In recognition of her academic work and her work as a history communicator, Robyn was elected an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2025.

Her personal website is robynatcheson.com

Dr Robyn Atcheson

Dr. Rebecca Watterson delivering a talk in the Guildhall, Derry. Dr. Watterson has red hair is speaking at a wooden podium with a microphone, in a room with wooden paneling.

Rebecca is a historian of medicine and in particular the history of mental illness and it’s treatment.

In 2020 she was awarded the Birley Prize for the best Master’s thesis in social history and was subsequently awarded funding to develop an innovated PhD project on the history of lobotomies in 20th century Britain.

She is Education Officer at the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum where she has been develops creative learning programmes for young people to help them engage with history alongside her many projects as an independent historian and researcher.

Her personal website is rebeccawatterson.com

Dr Rebecca Watterson

Leading historian of the second world war in Northern Ireland Michael Burns. A bearded man with curly hair smiling, wearing a green shirt, in a workshop with shelves of bottles and boxes in the background.

Michael Burns M.A.

Michael is the Vice Chair of the Federation for Ulster Local Studies and holds the post of Research Officer at the Northern Ireland War Museum in addition to being a genealogical researcher for the Ulster Historical Foundation.

He earned a commendation for his Masters in Public History at Queen’s University, Belfast in 2018 and has since become one of Northern Ireland’s leading historians of the Second World War, regularly speaking to audiences all over the country.

He is an expert in public history, especially oral histories and the underserved histories of marginalised groups.