Michael O’Connell is Professor emeritus at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) where he has been involved in research, teaching and administration for over four decades. He has also researched at the Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research in Wilhelmshaven, the Institute for Geobotany, University of Hanover and the Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), Potsdam, supported by the Humboldt-Stiftung and DAAD. He is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy. He serves on the editorial board of Vegetation History and Archaeobotany and is chairperson of the Agricultural History Society of Ireland.

Fergus Kelly is a Senior Professor emeritus in the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His main academic interests are in early Irish legal and social history, he is editor of the Early Irish Law Series and has served as a co-editor of Celtica (1999–2015). His publications include an edition (with Thomas Charles-Edwards) of an Old Irish law-text on bee-keeping (1983), a Guide to Early Irish Law (1988) and Early Irish Farming (1997). He is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy.

James McAdam is an Honorary Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast and Head of the Crops, Grassland and Ecology branch in the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Northern Ireland. His research interests include the agronomy of hill and upland pastures, silvopastoral systems, and southern hemisphere, cool-temperate grasslands. He is editor of the Falkland Islands Journal, and serves on the editorial board of Biology and Environment and Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia. He is a Fellow of the Council of Awards of Royal Agricultural Societies and was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to agriculture and research.