Advisory Board

Sir Thomas Devine, OBE, Ph.D. is widely acknowledged as Scotland’s leading historian, having published over 100 academic articles and over 30 books on subjects such as Scottish transatlantic trade, urban elites and rural society. In 2001, Queen Elizabeth II presented him with Scotland’s supreme academic accolade, the Royal Gold Medal, and in 2005 was appointed OBE for services to Scottish history. He was knighted in 2014. His published works include The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (1988), Scottish Emigration & Scottish Society (ed,1992), Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (1994), Scotland’s Empire and the Shaping of the Americas (2004), and To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 (2011). His most recent book is Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748698080

Elizabeth L. Ewan, Ph.D. is the University Research Chair and Professor of History and Scottish Studies, at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She also serves as the International Officer of Women’s History Scotland, which exists to promote study and research in women’s and gender history, particularly for those working in Scotland or working on Scottish themes. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern Scottish women, gender, crime and life in Scotland leading up to the Highland Clearances, as well as the emigration to Canada.

James Hunter, CBE, FRSE, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland. He is the author of many books about the Highlands and the region’s worldwide diaspora, including A Dance Called America, and Scottish Exodus: Travels of a Worldwide Clan. He was the first director of the Scottish Crofters Union. In the course of a varied career, Hunter has also been a journalist and broadcaster, and a member of the BBC’s Broadcasting Council for Scotland. In recognition of his services to the Highlands and Islands, he was made a CBE in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007.

Alexander C. McLeod is a retired doctor in Nashville, Tennessee, and is former president of the Associated Clan MacLeod Societies. In 1802 McLeod’s people left the Glendale district of Skye for North Carolina’s Cape Fear River country. McLeod’s work with the Highland diaspora led him to assist James Hunter to write Scottish Exodus: Travel Among a Worldwide Clan, which covered the emigration throughout Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Iceland, England, France, Poland and South Africa. McLeod has published articles on medical subjects, American history and Highland Scots history and genealogy.

Paul Basu, Ph.D. is a social anthropologist and museum/heritage consultant and serves as Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Heritage at University College London. His research specializes in landscape, memory and cultural heritage, in Scotland and West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone and Nigeria. He has also worked as a filmmaker, and his research looks at how various forms of media are used in ethnography and exhibitions. He is the author of Highland Homecomings.

Celeste Ray, Ph.D. is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and has studied Cultural Resource Management at the University of Edinburgh. Ray has investigated the politics of Scottish national identity in the study and presentation of battlefields. She has also examined the growth of the Scottish heritage movement in the U.S. and studied how American ethnic identity is formed over time. She has researched the considerable number of Scottish societies, games, cultural events, military re-enactments and also the study of genealogy in America. Select works include Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South (2001), and Transatlantic Scots (2005).

Eric Richards, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of History at Flinders University, Adelaide Universities, Australia. His specialist subject is the Highland Clearances and his acclaimed biography of Patrick Sellar was awarded the prize for Scottish History Book of the Year (1999). Select publications: Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (2004), Debating the Highland Clearances (2007) and Destination Australia: Migration since 1901 (2008) and The Highland Clearances (2008).

Michael Newton was awarded a Ph.D. in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 1998 and was an Assistant Professor in the Celtic Studies Department of St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia 2008-2013. He has authored books and articles on many aspects of Highland culture and history in Scotland and North America. He was the editor of Dùthchas nan Gaidheal: Selected Essays of John MacInnes, which won the Saltire Society’s Research Book award of 2006 and the author of Warriors of the Word: The World of the Scottish Highlanders, which was nominated for the 2009 Katharine Briggs Award for folklore research. In 2014 he was given the inaugural Saltire Award by the St. Andrews University Scottish Heritage Center (of Laurinburg, North Carolina) for his “outstanding contributions to the preservation and interpretation of Scottish history and culture.” His latest book is entitled Seanchaidh na Coille/The Memory-Keeper of the Forest. http://cbup.ca/books/newton-seanchaidh-memory-keeper-gaelic-canada-2/

Paul Grant-Costa is the executive editor of the Yale Indian Papers Project at Yale University. He was the Senior Researcher at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center; partner in Greymatter (a historical research consultancy); post-doctoral editorial associate for the Papers of Benjamin Franklin; legal intern at the Directorate of Human Rights, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France as well as lead historical researcher on a number of federal recognition projects (with tribal councils, tribal historians, lawyers, and anthropologists). Recent publications: Introduction to Lucianne Lavin’s Connecticut Indigenous Peoples (2013); essay on Anglo-Amerindian commercial relations (with Elizabeth Mancke) in E. Mancke, J. Reid, and H. Bowen, Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c.1550-1850 (2012); and several articles on New England Native history.

Faith Damon Davison, was the Archivist for the Mohegan Tribe with oversight of the Mohegan Library and Archives, rare books, documents and map collections, and was responsible for the Tribe’s 3-Dimensional collections. She received her Masters in Library Sciences from University of Rhode Island, and a degree in Anthropology from Connecticut College. She has curated at the Mystic Seaport Museum and interned at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Collections. She is on the boards of the Norwich Historical Society, Stanton Davis Homestead Museum, Yale Indian Papers Project and on the Collections committee for the Slater Museum in Norwich CT and also the Native American Collections Specialist for East Lyme Historical Society. The Mohegan Tribe honored her with the title of “Nonner” and served on the Mohegan Tribe’s Historic Preservation Review Board. She also received the title of Honored One for the Guardians of Culture, the Memory and Lifeways International Award Program from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums.